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Bartleby ve Şürekâsı
Bir şey yapması istendiğinde Kâtip Bartleby, "Yapmamayı yeğlerim" yanıtını verirdi. Bu fısıltı zamanla, "fırlatılıp atıldığımız" bu dünyanın yüzüne karşı söylenmiş en şiddetli "hayır"lardan biri oldu.
Bartleby ve Şürekâsı, hiç yazmamış, bir noktadan sonra hem kendileri için hem de bir eylem olarak yazmanın olanaksızlığı fikrine varmış yazarların ve onlar üzerine yazmış başka yazarların dünyasında baş döndürücü bir gezinti.
Bu roman -deneme ya da belki küçük bir ansiklopedi- bir ömür boyu tasarlanmış ancak hiç yazılmamış, buna rağmen edebiyat denizinde yüzüp duran milyonlarca sayfanın labirentinde zevkli bir yolculuk.
Belki de, Enrique Vila-Matas'ın iddia ettiği gibi, yazmayı reddetmiş yazarlarda ve yazılmamış yapıtlarında izi sürülmesi gereken, gelecek binyılın edebiyatına dair bir ipucu.
Yazarlık ve yazma kavramlarının belirsizleştiği dünyamızda, zorunlu bir okuma.
Ve bütün bunların yanında, "Bartleby sendromu"na yakalanmış o muhteşem beyinlerin dünyasında verilen, sürprizlerle dolu, neşeli bir parti.
Bartleby ve Şürekâsı, Barselona Şehri Edebiyat Ödülü'nü ve Fransa'da 2000 yılında En İyi Yabancı Kitap Ödülü'nü kazandı.
Bartleby ve Şürekâsı, hiç yazmamış, bir noktadan sonra hem kendileri için hem de bir eylem olarak yazmanın olanaksızlığı fikrine varmış yazarların ve onlar üzerine yazmış başka yazarların dünyasında baş döndürücü bir gezinti.
Bu roman -deneme ya da belki küçük bir ansiklopedi- bir ömür boyu tasarlanmış ancak hiç yazılmamış, buna rağmen edebiyat denizinde yüzüp duran milyonlarca sayfanın labirentinde zevkli bir yolculuk.
Belki de, Enrique Vila-Matas'ın iddia ettiği gibi, yazmayı reddetmiş yazarlarda ve yazılmamış yapıtlarında izi sürülmesi gereken, gelecek binyılın edebiyatına dair bir ipucu.
Yazarlık ve yazma kavramlarının belirsizleştiği dünyamızda, zorunlu bir okuma.
Ve bütün bunların yanında, "Bartleby sendromu"na yakalanmış o muhteşem beyinlerin dünyasında verilen, sürprizlerle dolu, neşeli bir parti.
Bartleby ve Şürekâsı, Barselona Şehri Edebiyat Ödülü'nü ve Fransa'da 2000 yılında En İyi Yabancı Kitap Ödülü'nü kazandı.
159 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Enrique Vila-Matas
147 books913 followersEnrique Vila-Matas is a Spanish author. He has written several award-winning books that mix genres and have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a founding Knight of the Order of Finnegans, a group which meets in Dublin every year to honour James Joyce. He lives in Barcelona.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 539 reviews
May 27, 2024
Story about stories… What makes authors write… And what makes them stop…
Take an exhaustive excursion to a library of unwritten masterpieces, to a cemetery of buried ambitions, dead hopes and ruined aspirations and Enrique Vila-Matas will be your scholarly and knowledgeable guide…
In Jorge Luis Borges’ perfectly mystifying and encyclopedic style Enrique Vila-Matas investigates, analyzes, studies and anatomizes the reasons why writers stop writing and prefer to become voiceless and wordless.
The rest is silence…
These phantom books, invisible texts, are the ones that knock at our door one day and, when we go to receive them, for what is often a trivial reason, they disappear; we open the door and they are no longer there, they have gone.
Take an exhaustive excursion to a library of unwritten masterpieces, to a cemetery of buried ambitions, dead hopes and ruined aspirations and Enrique Vila-Matas will be your scholarly and knowledgeable guide…
Everything changes except God. ‘In six months even death changes fashion,’ Paul Morand observed. But God never changes, I tell myself it is well known that God keeps quiet, is a master of silence, hears all the pianos in the world, is a consummate writer of the No, and for that reason He is transcendent.
In Jorge Luis Borges’ perfectly mystifying and encyclopedic style Enrique Vila-Matas investigates, analyzes, studies and anatomizes the reasons why writers stop writing and prefer to become voiceless and wordless.
Among those who in Don Quixote have given up writing is the canon, who confesses to having written ‘more than a hundred sheets’ of a book of chivalry which he discontinues because he realizes, among other things, that it is not worth making the effort in order to submit himself ‘to the confused judgement of the unthinking masses’.
The rest is silence…
December 8, 2023
Read In Spanish. Review in Spanish below.
At a certain level, the book is inspired by a novella written by Herman Melville, called Bartleby the Scrivener. I do not understand why, but it almost has a cultish gathering of supporters. What does this book has to do with that novella and should you read it before this one.? About the latter question, not necessary but it would not hurt. Maybe, more importantly, is to have an idea what critics say about it. Do not read my review as I disliked it quite profoundly. It is a story of a man who is hired as a scrivener (copy clerks). He is socially reclusive and at some point he refuses to do his job or to leave the premises of his office (he started to sleep there). Some people see this as an act of resistance against the evil society, or something like that. I called it parasitism. See, this is why I am not the person to discuss Bartleby.
Let’s get back to the Bartleby & Co. It is written in the form of appendixes for a book that does not exist. It collects different people who, for a reason or other, decided not to write, at all, or stopped after a while. To write or not to write? That is the question the people in this book ask themselves. The book also elaborates on the process the narrator used to collect the information and details of his personal life.
I liked this book a lot more than its inspiration. The structure was original and the information I got from its pages was interesting and mostly new to me. I was pleased to read about people I knew of and total unknowns.
Bartleby & Co is present in many Best of lists and it deserves to be there, both for its structure and content.
.Reseña en español.
El el libro está inspirado en una novela corta escrita por Herman Melville, llamada Bartleby the Scrivener. Es la historia de un hombre que es contratado como escribano. Es socialmente solitario y en algún momento se niega a hacer su trabajo o a abandonar las instalaciones de su oficina (empezó a dormir allí). Algunas personas ven esto como un acto de resistencia contra la sociedad malvada, o algo así. Lo llamé parasitismo. Mira, es por eso que no soy la persona adecuada para hablar de Bartleby. Así que por favor lee a las expertas.
Volvamos al Bartleby & Co. Está escrito en forma de apéndices de un libro que no existe. Recoge diferentes personas que, por una razón u otra, decidieron no escribir, en absoluto, o dejaron de escribir después de un tiempo. ¿Escribir o no escribir? Ésa es la pregunta que se hacen las personas que aparecen en este libro. El libro también profundiza en el proceso que utilizó el narrador para recopilar la información y los detalles de su vida personal.
Me gustó mucho más este libro que su inspiración. La estructura es original y la información que obtuve de sus páginas fue interesante y en su mayoría nueva para mí.
Bartleby & Co está presente en muchas listas Best of y merece estar ahí, tanto por su estructura como por su contenido.
At a certain level, the book is inspired by a novella written by Herman Melville, called Bartleby the Scrivener. I do not understand why, but it almost has a cultish gathering of supporters. What does this book has to do with that novella and should you read it before this one.? About the latter question, not necessary but it would not hurt. Maybe, more importantly, is to have an idea what critics say about it. Do not read my review as I disliked it quite profoundly. It is a story of a man who is hired as a scrivener (copy clerks). He is socially reclusive and at some point he refuses to do his job or to leave the premises of his office (he started to sleep there). Some people see this as an act of resistance against the evil society, or something like that. I called it parasitism. See, this is why I am not the person to discuss Bartleby.
Let’s get back to the Bartleby & Co. It is written in the form of appendixes for a book that does not exist. It collects different people who, for a reason or other, decided not to write, at all, or stopped after a while. To write or not to write? That is the question the people in this book ask themselves. The book also elaborates on the process the narrator used to collect the information and details of his personal life.
I liked this book a lot more than its inspiration. The structure was original and the information I got from its pages was interesting and mostly new to me. I was pleased to read about people I knew of and total unknowns.
Bartleby & Co is present in many Best of lists and it deserves to be there, both for its structure and content.
.Reseña en español.
El el libro está inspirado en una novela corta escrita por Herman Melville, llamada Bartleby the Scrivener. Es la historia de un hombre que es contratado como escribano. Es socialmente solitario y en algún momento se niega a hacer su trabajo o a abandonar las instalaciones de su oficina (empezó a dormir allí). Algunas personas ven esto como un acto de resistencia contra la sociedad malvada, o algo así. Lo llamé parasitismo. Mira, es por eso que no soy la persona adecuada para hablar de Bartleby. Así que por favor lee a las expertas.
Volvamos al Bartleby & Co. Está escrito en forma de apéndices de un libro que no existe. Recoge diferentes personas que, por una razón u otra, decidieron no escribir, en absoluto, o dejaron de escribir después de un tiempo. ¿Escribir o no escribir? Ésa es la pregunta que se hacen las personas que aparecen en este libro. El libro también profundiza en el proceso que utilizó el narrador para recopilar la información y los detalles de su vida personal.
Me gustó mucho más este libro que su inspiración. La estructura es original y la información que obtuve de sus páginas fue interesante y en su mayoría nueva para mí.
Bartleby & Co está presente en muchas listas Best of y merece estar ahí, tanto por su estructura como por su contenido.
June 18, 2023
A Theology of the Imagination
Bartleby & Co. is a survey of the negative literature of the last two centuries - what hasn’t been written and why - with interludes of fiction. It is fascinating, informative and wonderfully inspiring. The book promotes the adoption of silence as the preferred aesthetic response in a whole range of circumstances; but also encourages positive expression because “Only from the negative impulse, from the labyrinth of the No, can the writing of the future appear.” What Vila-Matas has created, in his own estimation, is less than a book, but obviously more than silence. He calls it “footnotes commenting on a text that is invisible,” that is to say, the book he didn’t write.
“The literature of the No,” as Vila-Matas calls this genre he invented by giving it a name, is typified by Herman Melville’s story of Bartleby the Scrivener, the writer who never writes, in fact he never leaves his business office, “not even on Sunday.” Bartleby is Everyman, or at least that 99% of the human population who don’t write and don’t regret not writing. But it also includes a large proportion of writers who indefinitely defer, temporarily abandon, or abort their writing entirely. It is all these for whom “Their soul emerges through their pores. What soul? God.” They are, in short, untold stories, but nonetheless stories and these stories are in some sense divine.
So Vila-Matas has an underlying theme of a popular theology, popular not in the sense of simplistic or even simplified but in the sense that it concerns everyone not just God-professionals like theologians, clerics and religious enthusiasts. In a very particular way these non-writers, failed writers and former writers are God-like: “It is well known that God keeps quiet, is a master of silence, ... is a consummate writer of the No.” Vila-Matas quotes approvingly from an invented philosopher: “I could not agree more with Marius Ambrosinus, who said, “In my opinion, God is an exceptional person.” And every writer of the No is exceptional.
What is most exceptional about God, of course, is his hiddenness, his transcendence, his inaccessibility to human thought. He is the Other masked in his own subjectivity. God is literally no-thing. He is alien, a void, just like another human being into which we pour meaning out of our own subjectivity. And this nothing exercises enormous power within the human mind through “the negative impulse or attraction towards nothingness.” The serious consideration of this condition is something ancient called negative theology, the study of what God is not.
The origins of negative theology are Greek. The philosophical incomprehensibility of the Divine was imported into Christianity and, at least in the Eastern Orthodox Church, acted as a sort of brake on the doctrinal ambitions of the ecclesiastical establishment (one reason for the relative emphasis on liturgy in the Eastern Church). But the Western Church, with its doctrinal focus (and consequent dependence) on language, had a real problem squaring the Christian claims of revelatory access to divine secrets with the simultaneous recognition of the ineffability of God.
It was the 13th century Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, who devised a solution. His theory was that revelation of the transcendent was facilitated by analogy, what he called the analogia entis, or analogy of being. God, Thomas said, was not a being like created things. God’s nature of being was entirely different, completely alien to that of human existence; but, he claims, it is possible to make analogies between the two kinds of being. So ‘God is love’, ‘God is Trinitarian’, etc. are not definitions, nor even metaphors, they are purported inferences or translations from one mode of being to another.
The analogia entis, however, is obvious theological double-speak. If the being of God is beyond human understanding, human language is fundamentally inadequate as a foundation for the transfer of meaning from one kind of being to another. Language is just as transcendent, just as ineffable, just as incomprehensible in its being as God is in his. The 20th century theologian, Karl Barth, spent most of his professional life trashing the analogia entis as an invention of the Catholic Church, the purpose of which was to avoid what he believed were the authentic implications of Christian faith. By presuming that language was within human control, the analogia entis avoided confronting the very close analogy between language and God.
Vila-Matas presents an entirely new (that is to say ancient) version of negative theology in his book, and a very serviceable theory of how it complements revelation (or in more modern terms: imagination). Implicitly he bases this theory on what might be called the analogia novae rei, the analogy of new things, or perhaps more simply, the analogy of creativity. And quite appropriately he presents this theory as literary rather than theological. Nonetheless, it is patently both, which is its most exciting aspect: “Literature, as much as we delight in denying it, allows us to recall from oblivion all that which the contemporary eye, more immoral every day, endeavours to pass over with absolute indifference.”
The analogy of creativity translates between writing and reading. Writing is expressive, persuasive, and active; it is art. But silence, hiddeness, reticence, inaction are also creative. To put it another way, reading is the negative or apophatic twin of writing. They are equally creative positions in the world. Reading and writing are not, however, complementary activities; they are in fact antithetical ways of considering that which is transcendent and beyond our control and comprehension, namely language.
Reading is not merely not-writing; it is an attack on writing. Whatever meaning or intention went into writing is subverted by the reader through an interpretation over which the writer has no control. The only thing that reading and writing have in common is language. Not the language of a particular writer’s text but the infinite potential of language in general. The non-writer is the arbiter of the written word. The reader is a constraint not a person, or better “a tendency that asks the question, ‘What is writing and where is it?’”
Reading, like its counterpart of mysticism in religion, shows “the vanity of all initiative, the vanity of life itself.” Reading shows writing to be a transient thing, something of arbitrary and passing fashion. It creates for the writer “an aesthetics of bewilderment” by demonstrating “the antiquity of the new.” Just as even negative theology says something positive about God - namely his incomprehensibility - so reading makes the meaning of any text infinitely variable and thus impossible to pin down definitively.
Writing may be vain but it is not insignificant. It points to an effectively divine ideal that is beyond human capability to achieve. Vila-Matas quotes a writer who ceased to write, “I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I wanted to be a poem.” To merge with the infinity of language is what a writer wants to do. It is an essential aspect of pataphysics, the process of imagination. Reading, as a sort of counter-imagination, both encourages and frustrates writerly ambition. Vila-Matas also quotes the 19th century French moralist and essayist, Joseph Joubert: “One must resemble art without resembling a single work.” This union with language can only be achieved by reading, not writing.
Joubert was also the one who “wondered how to look in the right place when one does not even know what one is looking for.” And so it was Joubert who “spent his life searching for a book he never wrote, though, when all is considered, he wrote it without realising, thinking of writing it.” This is the ultimate creativity implied by reading - the permanent search which prevents writing from becoming a literally doctrinaire occupation. There is no final say, no definitive interpretation. The creativity of reading both limits and promotes the creativity of writing. This is the analogy of creativity. Reading and writing are incommensurate with each other except by the analogia novae rei.
Christianity, particularly Western Christianity, has misconceived language, and therefore literature, especially its own literature. It has claimed divine status for itself. By pretending to be superior to language, it divinizes itself and asserts the right to dominate not just writing, which is something perhaps tolerable in a religion of the Book, but also reading, that is, interpretation. This is, in its own terms, idolatry. God and language are indistinguishable in their transcendent power, their universal presence, and their unlimited potential for knowing. Neither God nor language can be constrained with impunity. By sterilizing negative theology, and persistently censuring the literature of the No (what it calls mysticism), Christianity has stopped the search for its own goal; it has become purposeless.
So Karl Barth was correct: the analogia entis is a ruse. But his fideistic response to that ruse is also self-defeating because it requires quite literally a deus ex machina that grabs people by the emotional throat and demands irrational intellectual assent and blind belief. What Vila-Matas provides is an alternative connection between God and man, between the infinitely powerful universe and the struggling individual. This connection is not through being but through creativity, not just the ability to make new and interesting interpretations of one’s existence, but also the necessity to do this continuously and permanently. The ability to read as well as write is a kind of grace that comes as a gift from elsewhere.
This is the biblical ‘image of God’ which demands not faith but only readerly hope to achieve. It also helps in understanding the seriousness of Oscar Wilde’s allusion to religion: “It is to do nothing that the elect exist.” Salvation is not achieved but is received by reading, by doing nothing. Reading demands not blind faith but rather blind hope that there is something to be found by simply absorbing what is there, the content of which is entirely unknown. The negative theology of reading cannot help but make a positive statement. This is a theology of the imagination in which “Everything remains, but changes; the everlasting is repeated mortally in the new, which is gone in a flash.”
Bartleby & Co. is a survey of the negative literature of the last two centuries - what hasn’t been written and why - with interludes of fiction. It is fascinating, informative and wonderfully inspiring. The book promotes the adoption of silence as the preferred aesthetic response in a whole range of circumstances; but also encourages positive expression because “Only from the negative impulse, from the labyrinth of the No, can the writing of the future appear.” What Vila-Matas has created, in his own estimation, is less than a book, but obviously more than silence. He calls it “footnotes commenting on a text that is invisible,” that is to say, the book he didn’t write.
“The literature of the No,” as Vila-Matas calls this genre he invented by giving it a name, is typified by Herman Melville’s story of Bartleby the Scrivener, the writer who never writes, in fact he never leaves his business office, “not even on Sunday.” Bartleby is Everyman, or at least that 99% of the human population who don’t write and don’t regret not writing. But it also includes a large proportion of writers who indefinitely defer, temporarily abandon, or abort their writing entirely. It is all these for whom “Their soul emerges through their pores. What soul? God.” They are, in short, untold stories, but nonetheless stories and these stories are in some sense divine.
So Vila-Matas has an underlying theme of a popular theology, popular not in the sense of simplistic or even simplified but in the sense that it concerns everyone not just God-professionals like theologians, clerics and religious enthusiasts. In a very particular way these non-writers, failed writers and former writers are God-like: “It is well known that God keeps quiet, is a master of silence, ... is a consummate writer of the No.” Vila-Matas quotes approvingly from an invented philosopher: “I could not agree more with Marius Ambrosinus, who said, “In my opinion, God is an exceptional person.” And every writer of the No is exceptional.
What is most exceptional about God, of course, is his hiddenness, his transcendence, his inaccessibility to human thought. He is the Other masked in his own subjectivity. God is literally no-thing. He is alien, a void, just like another human being into which we pour meaning out of our own subjectivity. And this nothing exercises enormous power within the human mind through “the negative impulse or attraction towards nothingness.” The serious consideration of this condition is something ancient called negative theology, the study of what God is not.
The origins of negative theology are Greek. The philosophical incomprehensibility of the Divine was imported into Christianity and, at least in the Eastern Orthodox Church, acted as a sort of brake on the doctrinal ambitions of the ecclesiastical establishment (one reason for the relative emphasis on liturgy in the Eastern Church). But the Western Church, with its doctrinal focus (and consequent dependence) on language, had a real problem squaring the Christian claims of revelatory access to divine secrets with the simultaneous recognition of the ineffability of God.
It was the 13th century Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, who devised a solution. His theory was that revelation of the transcendent was facilitated by analogy, what he called the analogia entis, or analogy of being. God, Thomas said, was not a being like created things. God’s nature of being was entirely different, completely alien to that of human existence; but, he claims, it is possible to make analogies between the two kinds of being. So ‘God is love’, ‘God is Trinitarian’, etc. are not definitions, nor even metaphors, they are purported inferences or translations from one mode of being to another.
The analogia entis, however, is obvious theological double-speak. If the being of God is beyond human understanding, human language is fundamentally inadequate as a foundation for the transfer of meaning from one kind of being to another. Language is just as transcendent, just as ineffable, just as incomprehensible in its being as God is in his. The 20th century theologian, Karl Barth, spent most of his professional life trashing the analogia entis as an invention of the Catholic Church, the purpose of which was to avoid what he believed were the authentic implications of Christian faith. By presuming that language was within human control, the analogia entis avoided confronting the very close analogy between language and God.
Vila-Matas presents an entirely new (that is to say ancient) version of negative theology in his book, and a very serviceable theory of how it complements revelation (or in more modern terms: imagination). Implicitly he bases this theory on what might be called the analogia novae rei, the analogy of new things, or perhaps more simply, the analogy of creativity. And quite appropriately he presents this theory as literary rather than theological. Nonetheless, it is patently both, which is its most exciting aspect: “Literature, as much as we delight in denying it, allows us to recall from oblivion all that which the contemporary eye, more immoral every day, endeavours to pass over with absolute indifference.”
The analogy of creativity translates between writing and reading. Writing is expressive, persuasive, and active; it is art. But silence, hiddeness, reticence, inaction are also creative. To put it another way, reading is the negative or apophatic twin of writing. They are equally creative positions in the world. Reading and writing are not, however, complementary activities; they are in fact antithetical ways of considering that which is transcendent and beyond our control and comprehension, namely language.
Reading is not merely not-writing; it is an attack on writing. Whatever meaning or intention went into writing is subverted by the reader through an interpretation over which the writer has no control. The only thing that reading and writing have in common is language. Not the language of a particular writer’s text but the infinite potential of language in general. The non-writer is the arbiter of the written word. The reader is a constraint not a person, or better “a tendency that asks the question, ‘What is writing and where is it?’”
Reading, like its counterpart of mysticism in religion, shows “the vanity of all initiative, the vanity of life itself.” Reading shows writing to be a transient thing, something of arbitrary and passing fashion. It creates for the writer “an aesthetics of bewilderment” by demonstrating “the antiquity of the new.” Just as even negative theology says something positive about God - namely his incomprehensibility - so reading makes the meaning of any text infinitely variable and thus impossible to pin down definitively.
Writing may be vain but it is not insignificant. It points to an effectively divine ideal that is beyond human capability to achieve. Vila-Matas quotes a writer who ceased to write, “I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I wanted to be a poem.” To merge with the infinity of language is what a writer wants to do. It is an essential aspect of pataphysics, the process of imagination. Reading, as a sort of counter-imagination, both encourages and frustrates writerly ambition. Vila-Matas also quotes the 19th century French moralist and essayist, Joseph Joubert: “One must resemble art without resembling a single work.” This union with language can only be achieved by reading, not writing.
Joubert was also the one who “wondered how to look in the right place when one does not even know what one is looking for.” And so it was Joubert who “spent his life searching for a book he never wrote, though, when all is considered, he wrote it without realising, thinking of writing it.” This is the ultimate creativity implied by reading - the permanent search which prevents writing from becoming a literally doctrinaire occupation. There is no final say, no definitive interpretation. The creativity of reading both limits and promotes the creativity of writing. This is the analogy of creativity. Reading and writing are incommensurate with each other except by the analogia novae rei.
Christianity, particularly Western Christianity, has misconceived language, and therefore literature, especially its own literature. It has claimed divine status for itself. By pretending to be superior to language, it divinizes itself and asserts the right to dominate not just writing, which is something perhaps tolerable in a religion of the Book, but also reading, that is, interpretation. This is, in its own terms, idolatry. God and language are indistinguishable in their transcendent power, their universal presence, and their unlimited potential for knowing. Neither God nor language can be constrained with impunity. By sterilizing negative theology, and persistently censuring the literature of the No (what it calls mysticism), Christianity has stopped the search for its own goal; it has become purposeless.
So Karl Barth was correct: the analogia entis is a ruse. But his fideistic response to that ruse is also self-defeating because it requires quite literally a deus ex machina that grabs people by the emotional throat and demands irrational intellectual assent and blind belief. What Vila-Matas provides is an alternative connection between God and man, between the infinitely powerful universe and the struggling individual. This connection is not through being but through creativity, not just the ability to make new and interesting interpretations of one’s existence, but also the necessity to do this continuously and permanently. The ability to read as well as write is a kind of grace that comes as a gift from elsewhere.
This is the biblical ‘image of God’ which demands not faith but only readerly hope to achieve. It also helps in understanding the seriousness of Oscar Wilde’s allusion to religion: “It is to do nothing that the elect exist.” Salvation is not achieved but is received by reading, by doing nothing. Reading demands not blind faith but rather blind hope that there is something to be found by simply absorbing what is there, the content of which is entirely unknown. The negative theology of reading cannot help but make a positive statement. This is a theology of the imagination in which “Everything remains, but changes; the everlasting is repeated mortally in the new, which is gone in a flash.”
April 7, 2019
Take a minute and think about all of the books that you will read in your life. Imagine a large room, books stacked floor to ceiling - everything you've read. Now imagine outside of that room all of the books that you will never read - they line the halls, choke the doorway and cascade down the front steps to a sea of tomes that looks endless down the street. As a reader, those books are as good as having never been writ. You can know of them, but without sampling between the covers you can't really know them.
Now imagine the Alexandria library. Before Caesar puts the torch to it. All those books, all that knowledge, those stories. And then it is gone. We can mourn the loss of those books, but what do we really long for? The potential? We don't know what they contained. We just want to make that loss personal. Like all those books we won't ever read. I've resigned myself to the fact that I probably will never read all of Dickens, and to me, they may as well have been in that Alexandrian blaze.
Reading is an adventure in solipsism, a personal quest that we can occasionally run parallel with others, but in the end what we decide to read - and how we receive it - is uniquely our own. If you are with me so far, then you are in the No, and you are aware that your reading life isn't just everything you have read, it's everything you won't read - whether by conscious decision or by running out of time.
In his brilliant un-novel, Vila-Matas wants to add to the "legion of No" those authors, like Bartleby, that Preferred Not To. Some wrote a novel, or two or three, and then stopped writing for a long time, some of them forever. Others are novelists that never wrote. Is that such a thing? Does an author need a book to become as such? Vila-Matas's hunchbacked narrator shares with the reader his footnoted Bartlebyan thesis of the No, and when you read this book, you just might come away with re-definitions, new filters. I know I did.
Now imagine the Alexandria library. Before Caesar puts the torch to it. All those books, all that knowledge, those stories. And then it is gone. We can mourn the loss of those books, but what do we really long for? The potential? We don't know what they contained. We just want to make that loss personal. Like all those books we won't ever read. I've resigned myself to the fact that I probably will never read all of Dickens, and to me, they may as well have been in that Alexandrian blaze.
Reading is an adventure in solipsism, a personal quest that we can occasionally run parallel with others, but in the end what we decide to read - and how we receive it - is uniquely our own. If you are with me so far, then you are in the No, and you are aware that your reading life isn't just everything you have read, it's everything you won't read - whether by conscious decision or by running out of time.
In his brilliant un-novel, Vila-Matas wants to add to the "legion of No" those authors, like Bartleby, that Preferred Not To. Some wrote a novel, or two or three, and then stopped writing for a long time, some of them forever. Others are novelists that never wrote. Is that such a thing? Does an author need a book to become as such? Vila-Matas's hunchbacked narrator shares with the reader his footnoted Bartlebyan thesis of the No, and when you read this book, you just might come away with re-definitions, new filters. I know I did.
November 8, 2023
This book is called a novel but I found it to be really a collection of essays about authors. It’s an homage to books and authors. The author uses the terms a ‘Bartleby,’ or ‘the No’s’ to mean writers who stopped writing or never actually wrote. This group includes some great writers, but also some relatively obscure authors, and authors he invented, Many of the books and authors are Spanish. The title refers to Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener’s classic line “I would prefer not to.”
Fiction or non-fiction? We assume a little of both, but we are hopeful that when Vila-Matas quotes a famous writer he is not simply adding to the wealth of fake quotes out there floating around on Facebook. The book is structured as footnotes to a non-existent novel. There are 86 in all and, as I say, I describe them as 86 two-page essays with wit and humor. The author delights in giving us reasons why authors stop writing.
Some examples of what you are in for if you read the book:
Juan Rulfo wrote Pedro Páramo, a Mexican classic that all Mexican high school kids read. (I reviewed it – a great book!) He wrote nothing else in the remaining 30 years until his death. When asked why he had not produced more works he said “Well, my Uncle Celerino died and it was he who told me the stories.”
Same with Rimbaud; two classics by age 19 and nothing else before he died 20 years later.
Felipe Alfau wrote Chromos, about Spanish immigrants in New York City in the 1940s. (I also reviewed that and found it quite good.) He wrote it when he first moved to New York from Spain. That was it. After he learned English he said, in effect, that ‘his mind was overwhelmed by the complexity of language after he learned English.’
Vila-Matas intersperses some personal stories. He tells us of a woman he formerly loved who wrote a book ‘in her head’ all her life and never committed it to paper. She is one of many such ‘mental authors.' The author tells us of an online website that accepts any book that has been previously unpublished or rejected.
Thomas de Quincey wrote the famous essay Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He wrote nothing else between ages 19 and 36 because, let’s say, ‘he was impaired.’
JD Salinger wrote four well-known stories including Catcher in the Rye from 1951 to 1963. He then went silent and dropped off the radar until his death 47 years later. Thomas Pynchon is another author known for his disappearing act, although Pynchon published a novel in 2013 and may still be around; if so he’s 86.
Borges wrote an essay about a great poet who, at the time of Borges’ writing, had been silent for 25 years. In the essay Borges speculated that the poet’s dexterity was so great that ‘he saw literature as a game that was too easy.’
The author mentions Portuguese writer and poet Fernando Pessoa a couple of times. Pessoa killed off one of his fictional ‘other selves’ because that invented character despaired of being able to write superior art.
Oscar Wilde went silent the last years of his short life. Supposedly he told a Paris newspaper: “When I did not know life, I wrote; now that I know its meaning, I have nothing more to write.”
I find books like these useful in acquainting us with other great works. For example, I'm now curious to read Call It Sleep by Henry Roth. The novel itself had two lives. Roth published it when he was 28, a recent Jewish immigrant to the US from Europe. It received a few decent reviews but went largely unnoticed and did not sell well. Roth gave up writing. Then 30 years later in 1964 it was republished and burst upon the literary scene as a ‘lost classic.’ Roth wrote one more work in his 70s and 80s, a four-volume work called Mercy of a Rude Stream. He wrote in his old age ���to make dying easier.”
The last story I’ll share is heartwarming but terribly sad. Puerto Rican/Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956. His wife was dying of cancer at the time and the Nobel Committee gave the couple special unpublicized notice that he would win the award so his wife would know before she passed away, which she did two days after she heard the news. She was his muse. The poet never wrote again and died two year later.
One last quote from Kafka: “A writer who does not write is a monster who invites madness.”
A Bartleby T-shirt from praxisstvdio.com
Spanish stamp honoring the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez from dreamstime.com
The author (b. 1948) from Goodreads.com
[Edited 11/8/23]
Fiction or non-fiction? We assume a little of both, but we are hopeful that when Vila-Matas quotes a famous writer he is not simply adding to the wealth of fake quotes out there floating around on Facebook. The book is structured as footnotes to a non-existent novel. There are 86 in all and, as I say, I describe them as 86 two-page essays with wit and humor. The author delights in giving us reasons why authors stop writing.
Some examples of what you are in for if you read the book:
Juan Rulfo wrote Pedro Páramo, a Mexican classic that all Mexican high school kids read. (I reviewed it – a great book!) He wrote nothing else in the remaining 30 years until his death. When asked why he had not produced more works he said “Well, my Uncle Celerino died and it was he who told me the stories.”
Same with Rimbaud; two classics by age 19 and nothing else before he died 20 years later.
Felipe Alfau wrote Chromos, about Spanish immigrants in New York City in the 1940s. (I also reviewed that and found it quite good.) He wrote it when he first moved to New York from Spain. That was it. After he learned English he said, in effect, that ‘his mind was overwhelmed by the complexity of language after he learned English.’
Vila-Matas intersperses some personal stories. He tells us of a woman he formerly loved who wrote a book ‘in her head’ all her life and never committed it to paper. She is one of many such ‘mental authors.' The author tells us of an online website that accepts any book that has been previously unpublished or rejected.
Thomas de Quincey wrote the famous essay Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He wrote nothing else between ages 19 and 36 because, let’s say, ‘he was impaired.’
JD Salinger wrote four well-known stories including Catcher in the Rye from 1951 to 1963. He then went silent and dropped off the radar until his death 47 years later. Thomas Pynchon is another author known for his disappearing act, although Pynchon published a novel in 2013 and may still be around; if so he’s 86.
Borges wrote an essay about a great poet who, at the time of Borges’ writing, had been silent for 25 years. In the essay Borges speculated that the poet’s dexterity was so great that ‘he saw literature as a game that was too easy.’
The author mentions Portuguese writer and poet Fernando Pessoa a couple of times. Pessoa killed off one of his fictional ‘other selves’ because that invented character despaired of being able to write superior art.
Oscar Wilde went silent the last years of his short life. Supposedly he told a Paris newspaper: “When I did not know life, I wrote; now that I know its meaning, I have nothing more to write.”
I find books like these useful in acquainting us with other great works. For example, I'm now curious to read Call It Sleep by Henry Roth. The novel itself had two lives. Roth published it when he was 28, a recent Jewish immigrant to the US from Europe. It received a few decent reviews but went largely unnoticed and did not sell well. Roth gave up writing. Then 30 years later in 1964 it was republished and burst upon the literary scene as a ‘lost classic.’ Roth wrote one more work in his 70s and 80s, a four-volume work called Mercy of a Rude Stream. He wrote in his old age ���to make dying easier.”
The last story I’ll share is heartwarming but terribly sad. Puerto Rican/Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956. His wife was dying of cancer at the time and the Nobel Committee gave the couple special unpublicized notice that he would win the award so his wife would know before she passed away, which she did two days after she heard the news. She was his muse. The poet never wrote again and died two year later.
One last quote from Kafka: “A writer who does not write is a monster who invites madness.”
A Bartleby T-shirt from praxisstvdio.com
Spanish stamp honoring the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez from dreamstime.com
The author (b. 1948) from Goodreads.com
[Edited 11/8/23]
December 22, 2018
«Nunca tuve suerte con las mujeres, soporto con resignación una penosa joroba, todos mis familiares más cercanos han muerto, soy un pobre solitario que trabaja en una oficina pavorosa. Por lo demás, soy feliz.»Cómo no va a gustarme un libro que tiene tal inicio, como no va a gustarme este no-escritor de novelas que son ensayos o de ensayos que son ficción, atormentado por la inutilidad o la imposibilidad o la magnificencia inalcanzable de su oficio, que se cuestiona con Rimbaud si el arte no será en el fondo una tontería.
¿Por qué escribir? ¿Por qué no? Vila-Matas agrupa en torno a Bartleby (el célebre personaje de Melville que igualmente podría haber sido Wakefield, el famoso personaje de Hawthorne) a autores que se negaron a escribir o que callaron tras una o dos obras sobresalientes.
«Hablar -parecen indicarnos tanto Wakefield como Bartleby- es pactar con el sinsentido del existir. En los dos habita una profunda negación del mundo.»Porque en paralelo al cuestionamiento de la literatura hay un cuestionamiento de la vida misma. Nuevamente Vila-Matas mezcla vida y literatura hasta transformarlas, para desgracia de los escritores, en una misma cosa. Pocos son aquellos que abandonan la literatura precisamente para abrazar la vida, la gran mayoría justifican su abandono por razones que de igual manera pudieran servir para contestar a ese famoso TO BE OR NOT TO BE, esa cuestión fundamental de la filosofía que decía Camus.
Así nos toparemos con escritores que se paralizaron ante el abismo inaccesible de lo que buscaban o a los que, por vagos, les parecía una tarea impropia, o a los que, por ineptos, se sintieron del todo incapaces de la tarea, o a los que, quizás por vanidosos, calificaron el oficio de despropósito. También están los que pensaban que la palabra escrita era del todo insuficiente o sus primos cercanos que necesitaban llegar a la raíz del asunto, encontrar aquello que no sabían qué era ni dónde buscarlo pero que aun así intuían que en el mismo momento en el que se toparan con ello se darían cuenta del sinsentido de la tarea.
Sin faltar los que aducen que sus obras no les pertenecen pues fueron escritas como al dictado o bajo el influjo de alucinaciones, o aquellos para los que la escritura se despoja de todo atractivo o necesidad tras la muerte del amante, o aquellos desmotivados porque ya se ha escrito todo, o aquellos que ven en la literatura la razón de su perdición, o esas mentes privilegiadas para las que la literatura es un juego demasiado fácil, desprecio de la literatura que puede venir acompañado por otro desprecio aún más hiriente, el dirigido al gremio de los posibles lectores.
¿Por qué escribir? ¿Por qué vivir? ¿Por qué dejar de escribir? ¿Por qué dejar de vivir? La respuesta posiblemente más inteligente y, al mismo tiempo, más estúpida es la que dio Jacques Vaché: «El arte es una estupidez»… y se mató.
Pero ninguna razón convence a Vila-Matas, obviamente, que argumenta, como años más tarde hará en su obra El mal de Montano: «escribir es una actividad de alto riesgo… la obra escrita está fundada sobre la nada y un texto, si quiere tener validez, debe abrir nuevos caminos y tratar de decir lo que aún no se ha dicho». Un argumento excesivamente aristocrático que no creo que fuera capaz de disuadir a mucha gente ni de su silencio ni de su suicidio. Y yo, que soy más bien plebeyo, prefiero quedarme con la frase de Del Giudice: «Escribir no es importante, pero no se puede hacer otra cosa» o simplemente con el humilde objetivo de dejar atrás un trabajo bien hecho.
«Ayer me dieron la extremaunción y hoy escribo esto. El tiempo es breve, las ansias crecen, las esperanzas menguan, y con todo esto, llevo la vida sobre el deseo que tengo de vivir.» (Persiles. Cervantes)
December 11, 2018
"Un escritor que no escribe es un monstruo cortejando a la locura" Franz Kafka
Este año ha sido muy intenso para mí en lo que a literatura se refiere, y parte de esa intensidad se debe a la gran cantidad de clásicos que pude leer, pero además porque tuve la oportunidad de descubrir muchos autores y libros que nunca había leído y que me han resultado maravillosos, gratificantes, encantadores.
En el caso de los autores conocí a Yukio Mishima, Anne Brontë, Leonid Andreiev, H.C. Lewis, William Golding, Miguel de Unamuno, Philip K. Dick Stephan Zweig, Mijaíl Bulgákov y John Williams, entre otros, a quienes no había leído por desconocimiento, falta de tiempo o por terminar de leer la obra de mis preferidos como Dostoievski o Kafka.
Hay libros que me llevaré en el corazón cuando este 2016 termine. Algunos de ellos, Ulises (mi mayor desafío como lector), El Caballero que cayó al Mar, Niebla, Novela de Ajedrez, Stoner, Ubik, 1984, Jane Eyre, Almas Muertas, Los Hermanos Karamazov, El Maestro y Margarita (el mejor que leí este año) y éste libro de Enrique Vila-Matas.
Lo de Vila-Matas es genial. En este libro escrito como una mezcla entre la novela, el diario y el ensayo he podido repasar a tantos autores (y personajes) que encajan dentro del síndrome de Bartleby, el famoso personaje de Herman Melville, quien formara parte de una extensa listas de escritores del No.
¿A qué se refiere el autor cuando los denomina de esa manera? Bueno, siguiendo la famosa frase del copista de Melville, "Preferiría no hacerlo", Vila-Matas enumera una gran cantidad de autores que por alguna razón abandonaron la literatura de diversas maneras. Para ellos se vale de un gran estudio e investigación ahondando en la historia de la literatura y lo demuestra con gran maestría.
Por su libro, compuesto de distintas entradas de un diario ficticio o notas al pie de un libro inexistente, el autor nos enumera una lista muy variada, comenzando por los mas famosos, como Juan Rulfo y su falta de inspiración a causa de la muerte de su "tío Celerino", pasando por J.D. Salinger y su reclusión de treinta y dos años, Arthur Rimbaud, quien abandonara todo desde muy joven para dedicarse a cualquier cosa menos escribir, la lista se extiende a Robert Walser y su desmoralización kafkiana, al mismísimo Franz Kafka, quien siempre se mantuvo al borde del parate total y desvarío por sus contradicciones literatura versus oficina versus matrimonio versus existencia, hasta autores menos conocidos. Todos ellos abandonaron la literatura por ocio, falta de inspiración, prisión, locura, búsquedas místicas, ayunos interminables y mil motivos más.
Pero también extiende Vila-Matas esta lista a personajes que siguieron la línea de Bartleby, como lo fueron el curioso y (kafkiano también) personaje de Nathaniel Hawthorne "Wakefield", o el conocido Gregor Samsa.
Hay despedidas de autores que renunciaron casi al final de sus vidas como Oscar Wilde, Miguel de Cervantes y su despedida escrita en su último libro "Persiles" a horas de su muerte o la última frase del diario de León Tolstoi antes de huir para morir en una estación de tren.
Vila-Matas nos cuenta de libros que no existieron, que nunca se escribieron, cuentos que no se terminan como las "Narraciones incompletas " de Felisberto Hernández, de frases para el recuerdo, de personajes tristemente célebres y del mismísimo Herman Melville sucumbiendo al embrujo de su propio personaje para terminar aislado de todo y fracasado en la literatura mientras trabaja su aburrimiento en un triste despacho de aduana.
Enrique Vila-Matas logra escribir una gran libro, de menos de doscientas páginas, pero repleto de abundante información de todos estos autores, libros y personajes bartlebianos, narrado de manera amena, muy entretenido, casi como si el lector fuera un amigo que lo escucha durante una tarde de inspirada charla. Su lectura me mantuvo atento puesto que soy un gran fan de todo aquello que involucre lo biográfico como lo histórico en la literatura.
Mas allá de que creo que olvidó agregar a Harper Lee, quien luego del éxito de "Matar a un ruiseñor", se retiró de la literatura para no escribir más, le digo gracias, don Vila-Matas. Más no puedo pedir este año tan, pero tan intenso. Intensidad y alegría es algo que sólo la literatura me puede dar.
Este año ha sido muy intenso para mí en lo que a literatura se refiere, y parte de esa intensidad se debe a la gran cantidad de clásicos que pude leer, pero además porque tuve la oportunidad de descubrir muchos autores y libros que nunca había leído y que me han resultado maravillosos, gratificantes, encantadores.
En el caso de los autores conocí a Yukio Mishima, Anne Brontë, Leonid Andreiev, H.C. Lewis, William Golding, Miguel de Unamuno, Philip K. Dick Stephan Zweig, Mijaíl Bulgákov y John Williams, entre otros, a quienes no había leído por desconocimiento, falta de tiempo o por terminar de leer la obra de mis preferidos como Dostoievski o Kafka.
Hay libros que me llevaré en el corazón cuando este 2016 termine. Algunos de ellos, Ulises (mi mayor desafío como lector), El Caballero que cayó al Mar, Niebla, Novela de Ajedrez, Stoner, Ubik, 1984, Jane Eyre, Almas Muertas, Los Hermanos Karamazov, El Maestro y Margarita (el mejor que leí este año) y éste libro de Enrique Vila-Matas.
Lo de Vila-Matas es genial. En este libro escrito como una mezcla entre la novela, el diario y el ensayo he podido repasar a tantos autores (y personajes) que encajan dentro del síndrome de Bartleby, el famoso personaje de Herman Melville, quien formara parte de una extensa listas de escritores del No.
¿A qué se refiere el autor cuando los denomina de esa manera? Bueno, siguiendo la famosa frase del copista de Melville, "Preferiría no hacerlo", Vila-Matas enumera una gran cantidad de autores que por alguna razón abandonaron la literatura de diversas maneras. Para ellos se vale de un gran estudio e investigación ahondando en la historia de la literatura y lo demuestra con gran maestría.
Por su libro, compuesto de distintas entradas de un diario ficticio o notas al pie de un libro inexistente, el autor nos enumera una lista muy variada, comenzando por los mas famosos, como Juan Rulfo y su falta de inspiración a causa de la muerte de su "tío Celerino", pasando por J.D. Salinger y su reclusión de treinta y dos años, Arthur Rimbaud, quien abandonara todo desde muy joven para dedicarse a cualquier cosa menos escribir, la lista se extiende a Robert Walser y su desmoralización kafkiana, al mismísimo Franz Kafka, quien siempre se mantuvo al borde del parate total y desvarío por sus contradicciones literatura versus oficina versus matrimonio versus existencia, hasta autores menos conocidos. Todos ellos abandonaron la literatura por ocio, falta de inspiración, prisión, locura, búsquedas místicas, ayunos interminables y mil motivos más.
Pero también extiende Vila-Matas esta lista a personajes que siguieron la línea de Bartleby, como lo fueron el curioso y (kafkiano también) personaje de Nathaniel Hawthorne "Wakefield", o el conocido Gregor Samsa.
Hay despedidas de autores que renunciaron casi al final de sus vidas como Oscar Wilde, Miguel de Cervantes y su despedida escrita en su último libro "Persiles" a horas de su muerte o la última frase del diario de León Tolstoi antes de huir para morir en una estación de tren.
Vila-Matas nos cuenta de libros que no existieron, que nunca se escribieron, cuentos que no se terminan como las "Narraciones incompletas " de Felisberto Hernández, de frases para el recuerdo, de personajes tristemente célebres y del mismísimo Herman Melville sucumbiendo al embrujo de su propio personaje para terminar aislado de todo y fracasado en la literatura mientras trabaja su aburrimiento en un triste despacho de aduana.
Enrique Vila-Matas logra escribir una gran libro, de menos de doscientas páginas, pero repleto de abundante información de todos estos autores, libros y personajes bartlebianos, narrado de manera amena, muy entretenido, casi como si el lector fuera un amigo que lo escucha durante una tarde de inspirada charla. Su lectura me mantuvo atento puesto que soy un gran fan de todo aquello que involucre lo biográfico como lo histórico en la literatura.
Mas allá de que creo que olvidó agregar a Harper Lee, quien luego del éxito de "Matar a un ruiseñor", se retiró de la literatura para no escribir más, le digo gracias, don Vila-Matas. Más no puedo pedir este año tan, pero tan intenso. Intensidad y alegría es algo que sólo la literatura me puede dar.
November 25, 2018
بطل هذه الرواية كاتب, كتب رواية واحدة وتوقف عن الكتابة لمدة 25 سنة
يحاول العودة للكتابة مرة أخرى بكتابة هذه الملاحظات أو اليوميات, موضوع هذه الملاحظات هو كُتاب أدب ال لا و( لا) معناها هنا لا للكتابة
أي الكُتاب الذين توقفوا عن فعل الكتابة ويسميهم باسم بارتلبي - شخصية من رواية للكاتب هرمان ملفيل- وهو شخص انعزالي رافض للعالم
عن الكُتاب والمبدعين الذين قرروا الانعزال ورفضوا الاستمرار بالكتابة لأسباب واضحة وأخرى غير واضحة وغير مفهومة
فقدان الرغبة, صعوبة الوصول للأفكار, الإحساس باللاجدوى, وغيرها.بحث في هذه الأسرار والأسباب ومحاولة لفهمها
الرواية تعرض الكثير من الكتب, والكُتاب وبعض مراحل حياتهم وأعمالهم الأدبية وآراءهم
ويظل عالم الأدب والأدباء عالم مثير جدا للاهتمام
يحاول العودة للكتابة مرة أخرى بكتابة هذه الملاحظات أو اليوميات, موضوع هذه الملاحظات هو كُتاب أدب ال لا و( لا) معناها هنا لا للكتابة
أي الكُتاب الذين توقفوا عن فعل الكتابة ويسميهم باسم بارتلبي - شخصية من رواية للكاتب هرمان ملفيل- وهو شخص انعزالي رافض للعالم
عن الكُتاب والمبدعين الذين قرروا الانعزال ورفضوا الاستمرار بالكتابة لأسباب واضحة وأخرى غير واضحة وغير مفهومة
فقدان الرغبة, صعوبة الوصول للأفكار, الإحساس باللاجدوى, وغيرها.بحث في هذه الأسرار والأسباب ومحاولة لفهمها
الرواية تعرض الكثير من الكتب, والكُتاب وبعض مراحل حياتهم وأعمالهم الأدبية وآراءهم
ويظل عالم الأدب والأدباء عالم مثير جدا للاهتمام
September 25, 2023
În eseul mai mult anecdotic, intitulat Bartleby & Co, Enrique Vila-Matas face (cam haotic) catalogul scriitorilor care au renunțat la scris, dar și al scriitorilor care nu s-au apucat niciodată de scris, deși aveau, probabil, geniul de a o face, și care, în consecința acestui fapt extrem de înțelept, nu au fost niciodată scriitori la modul propriu, ci numai la modul figurat, ideal, transcendent, dacă mă pot exprima așa.
S-au lăsat de scris ori au fost obligați să renunțe la scris: Boethius (i s-a tăiat capul), Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort (ca să trăiască asemenea zeului, i se părea că scrisul nu este o modalitate inteligentă de a trăi), Rimbaud (n-a mai avut chef să scrie), Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin & Mihai Eminescu (și-au pierdut mințile), Philip Roth (dacă nu cumva șuguiește*), Sallinger (l-a lăsat inspirația), Corina Sabău - fiindcă a început să gîndească precum numitul Chamfort.
Nu s-au lăsat de scris: toți ceilalți, oamenii cu adevărat fericiți...
Literatura (poezii, proză, tragedii, eseuri etc.) care a rezultat în urma acestor renunțări dramatice a fost numită de Enrique Vila-Matas „literatură negativă”. Sintagma a prins și cronicarii literari de pretutindeni au vorbit foarte serios, academic chiar, despre „literatura negativă”. Expresia numește, ca să trag și o concluzie isteață (înainte de a pune premisele), tot ceea ce fac cei care nu s-au apucat încă de scris - și nici nu au de gînd, spre cinstea lor, să o facă vreodată.
Dacă mai aveam vreo jenă că nu scriu suficient (fiindcă nu pot să scriu, sau fiindcă mi-e lene să scriu, sau fiindcă am găsit ceva mai util de făcut), după lectura eseului propus de Enrique Vila-Matas, rușinea mi-a trecut cu desăvîrșire.
Ceea ce recomand și Domniilor Voastre. Din tot sufletul...
P. S. Nu comentez acum cît de pestrițe au fost (cînd au fost) rațiunile celor care s-au apucat de compus „literatură negativă”. Observ, totuși, o anume deosebire (nu mică!) între dezgustul lui Arthur Rimbaud (care pleacă în Africa și face trafic de arme), exaltarea mistică a lui Gogol și maladia nervoasă a lui Robert Walser.
* Philip Roth n-a șuguit. După ce a publicat Nemesis (2010), n-a mai scris nimic
S-au lăsat de scris ori au fost obligați să renunțe la scris: Boethius (i s-a tăiat capul), Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort (ca să trăiască asemenea zeului, i se părea că scrisul nu este o modalitate inteligentă de a trăi), Rimbaud (n-a mai avut chef să scrie), Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin & Mihai Eminescu (și-au pierdut mințile), Philip Roth (dacă nu cumva șuguiește*), Sallinger (l-a lăsat inspirația), Corina Sabău - fiindcă a început să gîndească precum numitul Chamfort.
Nu s-au lăsat de scris: toți ceilalți, oamenii cu adevărat fericiți...
Literatura (poezii, proză, tragedii, eseuri etc.) care a rezultat în urma acestor renunțări dramatice a fost numită de Enrique Vila-Matas „literatură negativă”. Sintagma a prins și cronicarii literari de pretutindeni au vorbit foarte serios, academic chiar, despre „literatura negativă”. Expresia numește, ca să trag și o concluzie isteață (înainte de a pune premisele), tot ceea ce fac cei care nu s-au apucat încă de scris - și nici nu au de gînd, spre cinstea lor, să o facă vreodată.
Dacă mai aveam vreo jenă că nu scriu suficient (fiindcă nu pot să scriu, sau fiindcă mi-e lene să scriu, sau fiindcă am găsit ceva mai util de făcut), după lectura eseului propus de Enrique Vila-Matas, rușinea mi-a trecut cu desăvîrșire.
Ceea ce recomand și Domniilor Voastre. Din tot sufletul...
P. S. Nu comentez acum cît de pestrițe au fost (cînd au fost) rațiunile celor care s-au apucat de compus „literatură negativă”. Observ, totuși, o anume deosebire (nu mică!) între dezgustul lui Arthur Rimbaud (care pleacă în Africa și face trafic de arme), exaltarea mistică a lui Gogol și maladia nervoasă a lui Robert Walser.
* Philip Roth n-a șuguit. După ce a publicat Nemesis (2010), n-a mai scris nimic
January 22, 2022
La literatura (y la vida) del no. Los escritores que, como Bartleby el escribiente de Herman Melville, llegaron a la conclusión, por un camino u otro, de que preferirían no hacerlo.
Algunas cuestiones previas:
¿Te apasionan autores como Schopenhauer, Walser, Kafka, Rulfo, Salinger, Bernhard, Rimbaud... o sus nombres te producen dentera lectora?
¿Eres capaz de leer frases como la que sigue sin que te levanten dolor de cabeza?
"escribir es intentar saber qué escribiríamos si escribiéramos" decía Marguerite Duras
Pues si has superado este test, el libro te puede interesar, como me ha interesado a mí, aunque a ratos es un poco rollete. En general trata de la pulsión destructiva hacia la literatura, el nihilismo que hace ver que todo es inútil y que abarcar la realidad o nuestros sentimientos a través del lenguaje es imposible. Esto es especialmente evidente en la literatura contemporánea, que ha producido textos absurdos, oscuros o difíciles y parece encontrarse en un callejón sin salida:
En realidad, la enfermedad, el síndrome de Bartleby, viene de lejos. Hoy ya es un mal endémico de las literaturas contemporáneas, esta pulsión negativa o atracción por la nada que hace que ciertos autores literarios no lleguen, en apariencia, a serlo nunca.
Vila-Matas organiza sus reflexiones en forma de notas numeradas a un texto inexistente. En todo momento su estilo personal se manifiesta y utiliza distintos artificios literarios para estructurar este ensayo, que también incorpora la ficción, novelándose a sí mismo y haciendo intervenir a un autor imaginario, Robert Derain, que le escribe para proporcionarle materiales sobre el tema.
En algunos momentos, el autor combate el nihilismo literario y encuentra motivos que continúan justificando la existencia de la literatura:
La literatura, por mucho que nos apasione negarla, permite rescatar del olvido todo eso sobre lo que la mirada contemporánea, cada día más inmoral, pretende deslizarse con las más absoluta indiferencia.
En resumidas cuentas: brillante, profundo, alambicado, intelectual, como todo lo que escribe Vila-Matas, quien también nos deleita con algo de cotilleo sobre las vidas - complicadas - de los adalides del no, e incluso sobre sí mismo:
Encuentro cierto placer en ser arisco, en estafar a la vida, en jugar a adoptar posturas de radical héroe negativo de la literatura (es decir, en jugar a no ser como los protagonistas de estas notas sin texto), en observar la vida y ver que, la pobre, está falta de vida propia.
Algunas cuestiones previas:
¿Te apasionan autores como Schopenhauer, Walser, Kafka, Rulfo, Salinger, Bernhard, Rimbaud... o sus nombres te producen dentera lectora?
¿Eres capaz de leer frases como la que sigue sin que te levanten dolor de cabeza?
"escribir es intentar saber qué escribiríamos si escribiéramos" decía Marguerite Duras
Pues si has superado este test, el libro te puede interesar, como me ha interesado a mí, aunque a ratos es un poco rollete. En general trata de la pulsión destructiva hacia la literatura, el nihilismo que hace ver que todo es inútil y que abarcar la realidad o nuestros sentimientos a través del lenguaje es imposible. Esto es especialmente evidente en la literatura contemporánea, que ha producido textos absurdos, oscuros o difíciles y parece encontrarse en un callejón sin salida:
En realidad, la enfermedad, el síndrome de Bartleby, viene de lejos. Hoy ya es un mal endémico de las literaturas contemporáneas, esta pulsión negativa o atracción por la nada que hace que ciertos autores literarios no lleguen, en apariencia, a serlo nunca.
Vila-Matas organiza sus reflexiones en forma de notas numeradas a un texto inexistente. En todo momento su estilo personal se manifiesta y utiliza distintos artificios literarios para estructurar este ensayo, que también incorpora la ficción, novelándose a sí mismo y haciendo intervenir a un autor imaginario, Robert Derain, que le escribe para proporcionarle materiales sobre el tema.
En algunos momentos, el autor combate el nihilismo literario y encuentra motivos que continúan justificando la existencia de la literatura:
La literatura, por mucho que nos apasione negarla, permite rescatar del olvido todo eso sobre lo que la mirada contemporánea, cada día más inmoral, pretende deslizarse con las más absoluta indiferencia.
En resumidas cuentas: brillante, profundo, alambicado, intelectual, como todo lo que escribe Vila-Matas, quien también nos deleita con algo de cotilleo sobre las vidas - complicadas - de los adalides del no, e incluso sobre sí mismo:
Encuentro cierto placer en ser arisco, en estafar a la vida, en jugar a adoptar posturas de radical héroe negativo de la literatura (es decir, en jugar a no ser como los protagonistas de estas notas sin texto), en observar la vida y ver que, la pobre, está falta de vida propia.
May 19, 2021
“To write is not to speak. To be quiet. To howl without the noise.” (Marguerite Duras)
There is a famous French saying, “Do what you need to do, whatever may happen.” Near the end of his life, Tolstoy wrote only...”Fais ce que dois, adv...” but he never finished it. Here lies the heart of this book. Books not written, things left unsaid, a follow up book published forty years later, or a writer who never writes again?
Why? Enter Bartleby and company. The history of NO.
Herman Melville created Bartleby, a scribe who prefers not to proof read. Enrique Vila-Matas gives us a compendium of writers that fall into this literary following. Joseph Joubert, contemporary of Chateaubriand never wrote a book, but was known for his sayings. JD Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye) went into seclusion and Juan Rulfo (Pedro Paramo) went silent after his uncle Celerino passed away. Was he the source of his stories? Oscar Wilde stopped writing in his last years in Paris.
Edmundo de Bettencourt, a Portuguese poet published some new work after thirty years, and was criticized by fellow writer Miguel Torga. He never published again. Or the Frenchman Clement Cadou. He longed to be a writer but after meeting the Polish writer Gombrowicz, he became a painter of furniture, naming each piece a self-portrait. Why? Because furniture does not write!
Strange and wonderfully sad tales of affected writers lost in their art. Or is it lost in their minds. Secretive, aloof and bizarre characters, this book makes one think about fame, the publishing world and of course, all those who never were.
The bigger question, is why write? Or is it, when do you stop writing? Or maybe, why bother writing? How about poetry:
Poetry is not written, but if it lives in your mind, it is the most beautiful thing for someone about to stop writing. (JV Foix)
“Art is a stupidity” (Jaque Vache)
These collections of notes (86 of them) are told by our collector of “El No”. It’s 1999 and one gets a hint of the end of the millennium as the symbolic end of writing. But of course Vila-Matas is playing with us. The collector has published them in this book, his second after a gap of twenty-five years (a failed love story which even his parents hated). So he is in good standing with the rest.
This is not your standard book. If you are a lover of literature, and in particular, love those quirky stories that give a glimpse of the artist’s struggle to create, publish and be famous, you will love this book. Otherwise perhaps stay away.
“All the rest is silence.”
A big shout out to BO for his astute review. He was right!
There is a famous French saying, “Do what you need to do, whatever may happen.” Near the end of his life, Tolstoy wrote only...”Fais ce que dois, adv...” but he never finished it. Here lies the heart of this book. Books not written, things left unsaid, a follow up book published forty years later, or a writer who never writes again?
Why? Enter Bartleby and company. The history of NO.
Herman Melville created Bartleby, a scribe who prefers not to proof read. Enrique Vila-Matas gives us a compendium of writers that fall into this literary following. Joseph Joubert, contemporary of Chateaubriand never wrote a book, but was known for his sayings. JD Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye) went into seclusion and Juan Rulfo (Pedro Paramo) went silent after his uncle Celerino passed away. Was he the source of his stories? Oscar Wilde stopped writing in his last years in Paris.
Edmundo de Bettencourt, a Portuguese poet published some new work after thirty years, and was criticized by fellow writer Miguel Torga. He never published again. Or the Frenchman Clement Cadou. He longed to be a writer but after meeting the Polish writer Gombrowicz, he became a painter of furniture, naming each piece a self-portrait. Why? Because furniture does not write!
Strange and wonderfully sad tales of affected writers lost in their art. Or is it lost in their minds. Secretive, aloof and bizarre characters, this book makes one think about fame, the publishing world and of course, all those who never were.
The bigger question, is why write? Or is it, when do you stop writing? Or maybe, why bother writing? How about poetry:
Poetry is not written, but if it lives in your mind, it is the most beautiful thing for someone about to stop writing. (JV Foix)
“Art is a stupidity” (Jaque Vache)
These collections of notes (86 of them) are told by our collector of “El No”. It’s 1999 and one gets a hint of the end of the millennium as the symbolic end of writing. But of course Vila-Matas is playing with us. The collector has published them in this book, his second after a gap of twenty-five years (a failed love story which even his parents hated). So he is in good standing with the rest.
This is not your standard book. If you are a lover of literature, and in particular, love those quirky stories that give a glimpse of the artist’s struggle to create, publish and be famous, you will love this book. Otherwise perhaps stay away.
“All the rest is silence.”
A big shout out to BO for his astute review. He was right!
July 17, 2012
According to Enrique Vila-Matas there's a Literature of the No which doesn't exist but is still very important. Well, there's also a Reviewer of the No and it's me, and I say
NO
to this maundering waffly postmodern excuse. In order to say YES to this book you need to enjoy
a) many many many references to writers you will never have heard of unless you are a student of second-division European literature. Do these names show up on your radar?
Bobi Bazlen
Marcel Schwob
Gustav Janouch
Clement Cadou
Felipe Alfau
Jacob von Gunten
Ernesto Hernando Busten
Barbey D'Aurevilly
b) oh also, just to add to the fun, some of them might be made up. Obscure Hungarian novelists who didn't write much for thirtyfive years – and might not exist! yay. My pulses were racing.
c) you have to enjoy passages of which there are many like this :
And the point is, as Blanchot says, what he was searching for, the source of all writing, that space where he could write, that light which ought to be circumscribed, in space, demanded of him and confirmed in him dispositions which made him unsuitable for any ordinary literary work or distracted him from the same.
or
Julio Ramon Ribeyro – a Peruvian writer, Walserian in his discretion. Always harboured the suspicion, which turned into conviction, that there is a series of books which form part of the history of the No, though they may not exist. These phantom books, invisible texts, are the ones that knock at our door one day and, when we go to receive them, for what is often a trivial reason*, they disappear; we open the door and they are no longer there, they have gone.
(*perhaps to borrow a cup of sugar)
This book is a straight-up wannabeBorges, and I can appreciate that because Borges is a great writer, so who wouldn't, if they have something of the total book geek about them, wish to emulate the old omniscience. This book even starts from a good place, because I'm a great fan of Herman Melville's great story Bartleby. But the idea of the Literature of the No just falls apart like a badly stitched Frankenstein experiment. These writers who declined to write – most of the time it wasn't because of some grand philosophical gesture : "I could write, but writing, it is now impossible, in this modern world, after [atrocity of your choice]", not some dramatic Duchampian abandonment of art for chess or revolution. It was because they took to drink or had a brain injury or discovered sex or went round the twist and were shut up in asylums or disappeared in Mexican water or Guinean jungles or they had a career change and became full time acrobats or chemical plant executives. Or ran out of inspiration. So, you know, who cares about these mopes?
My dear friends, give this one a miss and try instead Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges and Bartleby by Herman Melville
July 22, 2024
4,5*
#Bartleby #2
Monsieur Teste não era filósofo nem nada do género. Nem sequer era um literato. E, graças a isso, pensava muito. Quanto mais se escreve, menos se pensa. – Paul Valéry.
Enrique Vila-Matas tem um saber enciclopédico, o que por si só é admirável, mas o facto de o transmitir de forma graciosa e, muitas vezes, até com graça, transforma-o num autêntico anfitrião que recebe o leitor no seu espaço como um igual. Para isso, criou um narrador que é um homem banal, apagado, malsucedido profissional e amorosamente, que depois de um único livro, abdicou da escrita, tornando-se assim num dos Bartlebys, “esses seres nos quais habita uma profunda negação do mundo”. Devido ao seu fascínio pela “pulsão negativa ou a atracção pelo nada que faz com que certos criadores (…) nunca cheguem a escrever; ou escrevam um ou dois livros e depois renunciem à escrita”, mete baixa médica e decide dedicar o seu tempo a escrever 86 notas de rodapé relativas a um texto invisível, acabando no processo, ironicamente, por quebrar o seu enguiço, sendo a prova este diário que até paisagem tem, por sinal, bem bonita:
Se é verdade que a todos os livros corresponde uma paisagem real, a deste diário seria a que pode encontrar-se em Ponta Delgada, nas ilhas dos Açores, (…) onde, um dia, descobri num livro de Raul Brandão, em “As Ilhas Desconhecidas”, a paisagem onde irão parar, quando chegar a sua hora, as últimas palavras (…): “Aqui acabam as palavras, aqui acaba o mundo que conheço…”
Há, no entanto, outras menções a escritores portugueses, como o suicida Barão de Teive, semi-heterónimo de Fernando Pessoa, e também José Saramago, através de uma personagem criada por um suposto espanhol que o acusa de se aproveitar de todas as suas ideias para livros:
“Então, Paranoico revela outro caso do síndroma de Bartleby. O que sofre o próprio Saramago. “Embora eu não seja vingativo -conclui Paranoico- sinto uma alegria infinita ao ver que, desde que lhe deram o Prémio Nobel, já leva 14 doutoramentos honoris causa e ainda ao esperam muito mais. Isso mantém-no tão ocupado que já não escreve nada.”
No meio de todo o drama que é a falta de inspiração, o receio de falhar, o perfeccionismo, a vida a intrometer-se, intui-se portanto um toque de paródia, o qual se evidencia com Marianne Jung, Rita Malù e Klara Whoyzek, as três únicas escritoras presentes nesta obra, o que seria interessante… se elas de facto existissem. Será que daqui se conclui que as mulheres estão imunes à síndrome de Bartleby? Ou na história da literatura não há escritoras que se tenham dado ao luxo de engonhar pois o seu tempo era precioso? Ou o Sr. Vila-Matas descurou essa parte dos trabalhos de casa que poderiam dar origem a notas de rodapé ainda mais curiosas?
Desde que reli recentemente o “Bartleby” original que percebi o meu fascínio por este tipo de figura, que agora a leitura de “Bartleby & Companhia” veio alimentar, fornecendo-me uma miríade de autores para associar a este fenómeno, uns que já conhecia e outros que estou desejosa de conhecer.
Começando pelo caso caricato do próprio Melville…
Melville morreu em 1891, esquecido. (…) Tudo o que escreveu nos últimos 34 anos da sua vida foi feito e maneira bartlebyana, com um ritmo de baixa intensidade, como se preferisse não o fazer e num claro gesto de recusa do mundo que o tinha recusado.
…e passando pelos eremitas mais famosos que são Pynchon, Salinger e Rimbaud, não esquecendo outros que talvez não associemos tão facilmente à figura do escrivão, como Tolstoi, Kafka, Guy de Maupassant, B. Traven, Robert Walser e Juan Ramon Jimenez, cujo final de vida é das coisas mais trágicas que já me passaram pelos olhos.
E só viverá para dizer ao mundo que apenas lhe interessou escrever porque Zenobia vivia. Morta esta, morto tudo. Nem mais uma linha, apenas silêncio animal de fundo. E no fundo do fundo, uma inesquecível frase de Juan Ramón (…) para a história do Não: “A minha melhor obra é o arrependimento da minha obra."
Munida de uma ambiciosa lista de Bartlebys para os próximos meses, siga então para bingo.
#Bartleby #2
Monsieur Teste não era filósofo nem nada do género. Nem sequer era um literato. E, graças a isso, pensava muito. Quanto mais se escreve, menos se pensa. – Paul Valéry.
Enrique Vila-Matas tem um saber enciclopédico, o que por si só é admirável, mas o facto de o transmitir de forma graciosa e, muitas vezes, até com graça, transforma-o num autêntico anfitrião que recebe o leitor no seu espaço como um igual. Para isso, criou um narrador que é um homem banal, apagado, malsucedido profissional e amorosamente, que depois de um único livro, abdicou da escrita, tornando-se assim num dos Bartlebys, “esses seres nos quais habita uma profunda negação do mundo”. Devido ao seu fascínio pela “pulsão negativa ou a atracção pelo nada que faz com que certos criadores (…) nunca cheguem a escrever; ou escrevam um ou dois livros e depois renunciem à escrita”, mete baixa médica e decide dedicar o seu tempo a escrever 86 notas de rodapé relativas a um texto invisível, acabando no processo, ironicamente, por quebrar o seu enguiço, sendo a prova este diário que até paisagem tem, por sinal, bem bonita:
Se é verdade que a todos os livros corresponde uma paisagem real, a deste diário seria a que pode encontrar-se em Ponta Delgada, nas ilhas dos Açores, (…) onde, um dia, descobri num livro de Raul Brandão, em “As Ilhas Desconhecidas”, a paisagem onde irão parar, quando chegar a sua hora, as últimas palavras (…): “Aqui acabam as palavras, aqui acaba o mundo que conheço…”
Há, no entanto, outras menções a escritores portugueses, como o suicida Barão de Teive, semi-heterónimo de Fernando Pessoa, e também José Saramago, através de uma personagem criada por um suposto espanhol que o acusa de se aproveitar de todas as suas ideias para livros:
“Então, Paranoico revela outro caso do síndroma de Bartleby. O que sofre o próprio Saramago. “Embora eu não seja vingativo -conclui Paranoico- sinto uma alegria infinita ao ver que, desde que lhe deram o Prémio Nobel, já leva 14 doutoramentos honoris causa e ainda ao esperam muito mais. Isso mantém-no tão ocupado que já não escreve nada.”
No meio de todo o drama que é a falta de inspiração, o receio de falhar, o perfeccionismo, a vida a intrometer-se, intui-se portanto um toque de paródia, o qual se evidencia com Marianne Jung, Rita Malù e Klara Whoyzek, as três únicas escritoras presentes nesta obra, o que seria interessante… se elas de facto existissem. Será que daqui se conclui que as mulheres estão imunes à síndrome de Bartleby? Ou na história da literatura não há escritoras que se tenham dado ao luxo de engonhar pois o seu tempo era precioso? Ou o Sr. Vila-Matas descurou essa parte dos trabalhos de casa que poderiam dar origem a notas de rodapé ainda mais curiosas?
Desde que reli recentemente o “Bartleby” original que percebi o meu fascínio por este tipo de figura, que agora a leitura de “Bartleby & Companhia” veio alimentar, fornecendo-me uma miríade de autores para associar a este fenómeno, uns que já conhecia e outros que estou desejosa de conhecer.
Começando pelo caso caricato do próprio Melville…
Melville morreu em 1891, esquecido. (…) Tudo o que escreveu nos últimos 34 anos da sua vida foi feito e maneira bartlebyana, com um ritmo de baixa intensidade, como se preferisse não o fazer e num claro gesto de recusa do mundo que o tinha recusado.
…e passando pelos eremitas mais famosos que são Pynchon, Salinger e Rimbaud, não esquecendo outros que talvez não associemos tão facilmente à figura do escrivão, como Tolstoi, Kafka, Guy de Maupassant, B. Traven, Robert Walser e Juan Ramon Jimenez, cujo final de vida é das coisas mais trágicas que já me passaram pelos olhos.
E só viverá para dizer ao mundo que apenas lhe interessou escrever porque Zenobia vivia. Morta esta, morto tudo. Nem mais uma linha, apenas silêncio animal de fundo. E no fundo do fundo, uma inesquecível frase de Juan Ramón (…) para a história do Não: “A minha melhor obra é o arrependimento da minha obra."
Munida de uma ambiciosa lista de Bartlebys para os próximos meses, siga então para bingo.
October 31, 2020
منذ لحظة، نظرت لوجهي في المرآة ولم أتعرف علي نفسي، العزلة المشددة التي عشتها في الأيام الأخيرة جعلت مني إنسانا مختلفا، علي أية حال، لقد عشت اغترابي علي مزاجي! لقد راقبت الحياة، ورأيت هذه الحياة المسكينة التي تفتقر إلي الحياة
إن كل ما يمكن التفكير به، يمكن التفكير به بوضوح، وكل ما يمكن قوله يمكن قوله بوضوح تام، لكن ليس كل ما يمكن التفكير به يمكن قوله بوضوح
هنا تنتهي الكلمات، هنا ينتهي العالم الذي أعرف
...
عودة إلي عالم بارتلبي
إلا أن العودة هنا ليست أمريكية ، بل إسبانية مع الأديب انريكة بلا ماتاس
لمن لا يعرف بارتلبي .. هو بطل رواية بارتلبي النساخ أحد أشهر الروايات للأديب الأمريكي الشهير هرمان ملفل
وبارتلبي بجملته الشهيرة أفضل ألا .. هو العلامة النفسية والفكرية المميزة لأي إنسان يخطو إلي عالم البارتلبية .. لدرجة أنه أصبح هناك مصطلح في علم النفس باسم متلازمة بارتلبي نسبة إلي الرواية الشهيرة .. أو نسبة لهذا البطل المسكين الذي لا نعرف له ماض، نعرف فقط ما أصبح عليه بالفعل من رفض تام للعالم والمجتمع والإنس��نية التي أزالها بطرف معطفه، أو مسحها من ثقته كما تمسح نظارتك
!!
وطبعا من قرأ الرواية سيعرف ماذا أعني، ويمكنك عزيزي القارئ يامن لا تعرف بارتلبي أن تتصفح مراجعات الأصدقاء عن رواية بارتلبي النساخ وستدرك بصورة مختصرة عما أتكلم
نعود للكتاب .. أو للرواية .. أو للدراسة
بارتلبي وأصحابه
كيف يمكن لبارتلبي أن يكون له أصحاب ؟؟
أصحابه هم من علي شاكلته دون أن يعرفهم أو يعرفونه
هم هؤلاء الأدباء الذين أعلنوا فجأة رفضهم لكل شئ، حتي الأدب والكتابة .. حتي الشهرة، الأموال، الجوائز .. كل شئ .. لقد أصبحوا كلهم بمنتهي البساطة يفضلون ألا
!!
بالمناسبة الكتاب دسم بشكل لا يصدق ! موسوعة لا يمكن تخيلها من الأدباء العالميين من مختلف الجنسيات .. لا أعلم حقا كيف تم حصرهم بهذا الشكل
نعم ستجد في الكتاب أسامي مألوفة .. ديستويفيسكي، وتولستوي، وملفل، وبيكيت، وبيسوا، وبورخيس، ورامبو، وجويس، وبودلير، وكافكا، وكالفينو، وكامي .. ولكن معهم وفي نفس الفصل ستجد عشرات الأدباء من أسبانيا وفرنسا وأمريكا اللاتينية الذين يستحقون البحث وقراءة أعمالهم .. ولا ادري حقا إن تم نشر أعمالهم بالعربية أم لا
...
لقد أصابتني التخمة حقا من كثرة المعلومات .. وأصابني الدوار من كثرة الأسماء التي حقا لم أعرف منها إلا ثلثها تقريبا .. ربما من الافضل في وقت ما أن اكتب ما أستطيعه وابحث عنه خطوة خطوة
لكن ليس الان ... أريد الراحة بعض الشئ 🙄
May 20, 2019
In this short work Vila-Matas is following Borges's tradition of writing a novel without actually writing a novel. The book is structured in a form of the footnotes to an unwritten novel. The novel, which should have been written by "the writers of No" - those writers who have stopped to write early in their life, or those who never started.
If it sounds complicated, it is actually not. It is very playful, humorous and erudite collection of anecdotes discussing the motivation to write, the reasons to stop writing, the writers- different characters and personalities for the last few centuries, starting from a young woman who has contributed to Goethe's Faustus without being properly attributed, and finishing with Juan Rulfo who has published his masterpiece "Pedro Paramo" and never wrote another piece of fiction in his remaining life.
It seems that for the majority of serious writers stopping writing is an equivalent of stopping living. Accidentally, straight after this book, i was reading a collection of short stories by Sergio Pitol, the Mexican author. He says: "He (a novelist) knows that when he is no longer able to do it (to write), death will come for him, not the final death but living death, silence, hibernation, paralysis, which is infinitely worse." That is why it is such a fascinating topic of investigation. I have to say, I am grateful to those "No"-writers for their contribution as I am seriously struggling with the volume of the "Yes" ones.
I like the voice of the protagonist, a lovable humpback who enjoys his solitude and much less melancholic than I initially assumed him to be. There are subtle allusions to Pessoa's "Book of disquiet". However, this little book is very different from Pessoa's masterpiece. It is directed outwards blending literary criticism with the imaginary diary and not taking life or literature too seriously.
If it sounds complicated, it is actually not. It is very playful, humorous and erudite collection of anecdotes discussing the motivation to write, the reasons to stop writing, the writers- different characters and personalities for the last few centuries, starting from a young woman who has contributed to Goethe's Faustus without being properly attributed, and finishing with Juan Rulfo who has published his masterpiece "Pedro Paramo" and never wrote another piece of fiction in his remaining life.
It seems that for the majority of serious writers stopping writing is an equivalent of stopping living. Accidentally, straight after this book, i was reading a collection of short stories by Sergio Pitol, the Mexican author. He says: "He (a novelist) knows that when he is no longer able to do it (to write), death will come for him, not the final death but living death, silence, hibernation, paralysis, which is infinitely worse." That is why it is such a fascinating topic of investigation. I have to say, I am grateful to those "No"-writers for their contribution as I am seriously struggling with the volume of the "Yes" ones.
I like the voice of the protagonist, a lovable humpback who enjoys his solitude and much less melancholic than I initially assumed him to be. There are subtle allusions to Pessoa's "Book of disquiet". However, this little book is very different from Pessoa's masterpiece. It is directed outwards blending literary criticism with the imaginary diary and not taking life or literature too seriously.
February 27, 2012
Footnotes to a book that doesn't exist about writers who stopped writing ("those in the No") by a solitudinous Spanish hunchback. Clear, affectationless prose. A hybrid of biography, pseudobiography, pseudoautobiography, review, invention, quotation, invented quotation, and quick sad tales centerlessly centered on Rimbaud, Duchamp, Kafka, Beckett, Melville, Hawthorne, Salinger, Saramago, Cervantes, Henry Roth, and dozens of other "writers of the No," whether real or imagined. A unique yet totally readable read. Lots of LOLs, too. David Shields (Reality Hunger: A Manifesto) would love it. Very highly recommended for fans of David Markson -- this isn't like Markson stylistically, but if you like Markson you just might like Mr. Vila-Matas.
January 15, 2019
Ah bu Villa Matas!!
Sanki edebiyat yeterince labirent değilmiş gibi labirent içinde labirent kurup oyunlar oynuyor okuyucuyla. Kaybettiryor, bulduruyor, düşündürüyor aslında süründürüyor bizi.
Ama ne süründürme! Melvill'in Bartleby sinden tutun otobüste karşılaşılan Salinger'e Tolstoy'un nihai yokoluşuna, tekinsiz Wittgenstein'den tasarım uzmanı Schopenhauer'e Juan Rulfo'nun Celerino Amcasından Goethe'ye, Kafka'ya daha nicelerine....
Yaşasın Red Edebiyatı yaşasın Bartleby Sendromu diye haykırıyor Villa Matas
Edebiyat içinde edebiyat, kayıp içinde kayıp zevk içinde zevk
Bazı yazarlar yüzünden iyice müptezel olduk iyi mi!
Ama bu yazarlar iyi ki varlar İyi ki :))
Sanki edebiyat yeterince labirent değilmiş gibi labirent içinde labirent kurup oyunlar oynuyor okuyucuyla. Kaybettiryor, bulduruyor, düşündürüyor aslında süründürüyor bizi.
Ama ne süründürme! Melvill'in Bartleby sinden tutun otobüste karşılaşılan Salinger'e Tolstoy'un nihai yokoluşuna, tekinsiz Wittgenstein'den tasarım uzmanı Schopenhauer'e Juan Rulfo'nun Celerino Amcasından Goethe'ye, Kafka'ya daha nicelerine....
Yaşasın Red Edebiyatı yaşasın Bartleby Sendromu diye haykırıyor Villa Matas
Edebiyat içinde edebiyat, kayıp içinde kayıp zevk içinde zevk
Bazı yazarlar yüzünden iyice müptezel olduk iyi mi!
Ama bu yazarlar iyi ki varlar İyi ki :))
May 17, 2012
My friend is telling me how innovative is Junot Diaz's 2007 book: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao because it uses too many footnotes and they are all interesting footnotes and even more interesting than the book's main story.
I agree. But I would like him to wait and read this 2000 first published book by a Spanish author, Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co. Why?
Because it is all footnotes!
This is a book of footnotes so there are no chapter numbers or headers but only numbers at the beginning of each sub-story. Each sub-story is about a writer he claims to be a "Bartleby". A Bartleby writer is one that has written a brilliant book and then either does not write again or rests for a long long time. A Bartleby can also be a person who everybody knows can write beautifully but, for a reason only known to him or her, chooses not to. People would ask a Bartleby writer these kind of questions: "Why are you not writing?" (full of concern), "When will we finally see your next book" (full of eagerness), or saying something like: "You know, you should write a book!" (full of encouragement).
It covers most of my favorite authors. Thank God I've read some of them so I was able to relate to this book. However, most of them are non-Americans so Harper Lee is not included but Vila-Matas did not forget to include J.D.Salinger. In fact, his footnotes are 2 or 3 and it was towards the end and so I waited and waited and I was, luckily, not disappointed since those footnotes are very moving.
Marguerite Duras is there and she says it all with this line: "To write is also not to speak. It is to keep silent. It is to howl noiselessly." Beautiful. Richard Brautigan is there before he shoots himself of course. Anthony Burgess. Juan Rulfo and his Pedro Paramo. Franz Kafka, discussed in length. The book also made me want to read Robert Musil soon.
I would also like to share a passage in this book. This one is the footnote about Schopenhauer Derain:
Bottomline, a very innovative approach in storytelling. A must read if you like style in what you read. Interesting stories about your favorite literary authors too. Just make sure that you know some of those obscure Latin American ones because they tend to be unfamiliar to me since I do not know their language. Thank God for the translators.
I agree. But I would like him to wait and read this 2000 first published book by a Spanish author, Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co. Why?
Because it is all footnotes!
This is a book of footnotes so there are no chapter numbers or headers but only numbers at the beginning of each sub-story. Each sub-story is about a writer he claims to be a "Bartleby". A Bartleby writer is one that has written a brilliant book and then either does not write again or rests for a long long time. A Bartleby can also be a person who everybody knows can write beautifully but, for a reason only known to him or her, chooses not to. People would ask a Bartleby writer these kind of questions: "Why are you not writing?" (full of concern), "When will we finally see your next book" (full of eagerness), or saying something like: "You know, you should write a book!" (full of encouragement).
It covers most of my favorite authors. Thank God I've read some of them so I was able to relate to this book. However, most of them are non-Americans so Harper Lee is not included but Vila-Matas did not forget to include J.D.Salinger. In fact, his footnotes are 2 or 3 and it was towards the end and so I waited and waited and I was, luckily, not disappointed since those footnotes are very moving.
Marguerite Duras is there and she says it all with this line: "To write is also not to speak. It is to keep silent. It is to howl noiselessly." Beautiful. Richard Brautigan is there before he shoots himself of course. Anthony Burgess. Juan Rulfo and his Pedro Paramo. Franz Kafka, discussed in length. The book also made me want to read Robert Musil soon.
I would also like to share a passage in this book. This one is the footnote about Schopenhauer Derain:
"Bad books are an intellectual poison that destroys the spirit. And since most people, instead of reading the best to have come out from different periods, limit themselves to reading the latest novelties, writers limit themselves to the current narrow circle of ideas, and the public sink ever deeper into their own mire."But my favorite is the one from the footnote for Oscar Wilde who says:"When I did not know life, I wrote; now that I know its meaning, I have nothing more to write."There are just too many of these mind-boggling passages.
Bottomline, a very innovative approach in storytelling. A must read if you like style in what you read. Interesting stories about your favorite literary authors too. Just make sure that you know some of those obscure Latin American ones because they tend to be unfamiliar to me since I do not know their language. Thank God for the translators.
October 12, 2020
Daha önce “Montano Hastalığı”nı okuyup şaşkına döndüğüm bir yazar Enrique Vila-Matas. Bir edebiyat çılgını, edebiyat takıntısı olan edebiyatçı, araştırıcı, yakıştırıcı, edebiyat kazanına delikli kepçesini daldırıp süzgecine takılan cinlikleri okuyucuyla paylaşan bir ilginç kalem.
“Bartleby ve Şürekası”nda da ilginç bir konuyu anlatıcı olarak ele almış, ortaya roman tarzında bir edebiyat araştırması hatta deneme-roman çıkarmış. Melville’in ünlü “Katip Bartleby”sinden hani şu “yapmamayı tercih ederim” yaklaşımındaki negatif ruh halindeki roman kahramanından esinlenerek bir “Bartleby Sendromu” olduğunu düşünüyor yazar. Kendisinin “ret edebiyatı” dediği, edebiyatta susma-yazmama temasını ele alıyor.
Kimleri kapsıyor ret edebiyatı ? İlk yazdığı veya yazdıklarıyla aynı düzeyde bir eser yaratamayacağına inananlar, yazmayı bilinçli olarak bırakanlar (intihar edenlerin bazılarını da bu sınıfa almış yazar), yazmak istediği halde yazmaktan korkanlar, yazmaktan ve edebiyat dünyasından sıkılanlar ve yazdığını bir türlü beğenmeyenler ve tabii tembeller...
Bartleby Sendromu’nun “A takımında” R. Walser, D.J. Salinger, F. Kafka, R. Musil, S. Beckett var. Tanınmamış birçok ismin yanında tanınanları da görüyoruz. Birçok kitabı okumuş olmamın memnuniyetini duymamın yanına yeni okunacak kitapları da keşfetmek hoş oldu. “Brautigan Kütüphanesi” veya “Guy de Maupassant’ın son günleri” gibi ilgi çekici konular okuma akışını kolaylaştırdığı gibi bilgi dağarcığımızı da zenginleştiriyor.
Okurluk dışında edebiyatla ilgilenenlere mutlaka öneririm.
Read
June 13, 2017reviewed in March 2011
A fine blend of 30% fact, 30% fiction, 30% humour plus a good dose of genius
I enjoyed this immensely, especially not knowing half the time which characters were real and which were fictional. However I didn't find any reference to the fictional writer, Alejandro Bevilacqua from Alberto Manguel's All Men Are Liars in this intriguing book by Enrique Vila-Matas about writers who refuse to write. Manguel claimed that Bevilacqua was mentioned in this book. Another elaborate hoax?
A fine blend of 30% fact, 30% fiction, 30% humour plus a good dose of genius
I enjoyed this immensely, especially not knowing half the time which characters were real and which were fictional. However I didn't find any reference to the fictional writer, Alejandro Bevilacqua from Alberto Manguel's All Men Are Liars in this intriguing book by Enrique Vila-Matas about writers who refuse to write. Manguel claimed that Bevilacqua was mentioned in this book. Another elaborate hoax?
July 10, 2024
Esta relectura vilamatiana, en cambio, se me ha hecho menos agradable. El tema es impresionante, las citas que elige y los libros que me descubre son fascinantes. Me encanta la forma, me encanta la idea, pero me siento como un muchacho adolescente que accede a un club de machos, en el que los comentarios misóginos son demasiado recurrentes, pero en el que encuentro un reconocimiento de chico, de chico listo, de chico listo lector. Creo que es el libro más incel que he leído en mi vida, ¡desde el mismo inicio!, «nunca tuve suerte con las mujeres», y eso me ha parecido divertido. A ver qué pasa cuando lo relea en otros quince años, porque —si para entonces estoy viva— sé que lo haré.
February 22, 2019
Matas'ın bir büyücü olarak neler yapabileceğini Montano Hastalığı'nda görme şansına eriştiğim için hafif bir tedirginlikle 4,5'tan 4 yıldız verdim bu güzelliğe.
Ayrıca bir 'ret redaksiyonu' akımı var ise, onlarca harf hatalı sözcük ile kitabın düzeltmeni bu akımın gizli bartlebik lideri olabilir gibi geliyor bana.
Ayrıca bu eser üzerine bir metin yazmayı istedim ama nedense vazgeçtim, belki bi ara yazarım ;)
Ayrıca bir 'ret redaksiyonu' akımı var ise, onlarca harf hatalı sözcük ile kitabın düzeltmeni bu akımın gizli bartlebik lideri olabilir gibi geliyor bana.
Ayrıca bu eser üzerine bir metin yazmayı istedim ama nedense vazgeçtim, belki bi ara yazarım ;)
November 30, 2021
سالانه صدها كتاب راجع به نوشتن و راهكارهای آن تألیف یا ترجمه میشود. اما اندك مواردی، دیوانهای پیدا میشود و از جُمودشدگی و كسوفهای نوشتن صحبت میكند. لائوتسه میگفت در حال بودنیم در حالی كه این نیستی است كه به كار میآید. شخص با ورود به دنیای این كتاب، خواسته یا ناخواسته، لحظاتی به عضویت باشگاه نَهگویان وفادار بارتلبی و شركا در میآید و اوقاتی بس دلپذیر در كنارشان سپری خواهد كرد و به سان سیاحی به سمت خلأ پیشروی میكند. عضویت در این باشگاه در ابتدا كاملا رایگان است؛ اما به زودی هزینه های ریز و درشتی روی دست میگذارد. این باشگاه فقط مختص نویسندگان قلم خشك شده و به بنبسترسیده نیست؛ بلكه هر كسی كه از جایی به بعد تصمیم به كنارهگیری گرفته تا از این قطارِ یخشكنِ همیشه در حال حركت پیاده شود میتواند جایی در باشگاه پیدا کند. بارتلبی و شركا كتابیست كه ممكن است در تمام مدت عمر، فقط یكی دوبار شانس خواندن چنین اثری نصیب كتابخوان شود. اگر تكانههای سندرم بارتلبی گریبان گیرم نبود، روزان و شبان در مورد این كتاب و تمام بارتلبیها حرف میزدم؛ اما ترجیح میدهم كه نه
May 20, 2023
7th book from my reading challenge with Ted.
#4 - Read a book with a name in the title.
It’s been a few weeks since I was able to find time to sit down and read. Even when I had a window of time, I just… didn’t do it. No idea why. This is a foreign feeling for me, saying no to reading. It is usually the only option I will pick blindly over and above anything else. It just hasn’t been there. Perhaps this book is the right pick to push me toward picking up a few more.
Vila-Matas gives us the parable of literary silence. Authors who were “artists of the refusal”. Artists who would “prefer not to”. An interview that the author did (and which can be found on his website) describes the book perfectly: It is “a very difficult-to-classify work”. It is “couched as a series of footnotes to an ‘invisible’ text, and the common theme is that of writers who inexplicably quit writing”. The book brings together several elements – “copious anecdotes from literary figures famous and obscure; quotations; paranoia; conspiracy; autobiography; and of course many, many works of literature”.
It worked for me at this moment in time because it was a series of “footnotes” – I am not sure that I would have been able to keep at this otherwise. My very own literary silence lite. I’m struggling to think of anyone who is into literature and the culture around it (authors, book collecting, canons, lists, movements, etc.) that would dislike this book. Is it a novel? Who knows. At times, the fictional aspect of it was more apparent. I’m thinking of the narrator’s run-in with Salinger in New York. At other points, I was amazed to be learning about facts that I would confirm with a search immediately (do yourself the favour and look up B. Traven if you haven’t).
Let’s see where my temperament brings me next.
#4 - Read a book with a name in the title.
It’s been a few weeks since I was able to find time to sit down and read. Even when I had a window of time, I just… didn’t do it. No idea why. This is a foreign feeling for me, saying no to reading. It is usually the only option I will pick blindly over and above anything else. It just hasn’t been there. Perhaps this book is the right pick to push me toward picking up a few more.
Vila-Matas gives us the parable of literary silence. Authors who were “artists of the refusal”. Artists who would “prefer not to”. An interview that the author did (and which can be found on his website) describes the book perfectly: It is “a very difficult-to-classify work”. It is “couched as a series of footnotes to an ‘invisible’ text, and the common theme is that of writers who inexplicably quit writing”. The book brings together several elements – “copious anecdotes from literary figures famous and obscure; quotations; paranoia; conspiracy; autobiography; and of course many, many works of literature”.
It worked for me at this moment in time because it was a series of “footnotes” – I am not sure that I would have been able to keep at this otherwise. My very own literary silence lite. I’m struggling to think of anyone who is into literature and the culture around it (authors, book collecting, canons, lists, movements, etc.) that would dislike this book. Is it a novel? Who knows. At times, the fictional aspect of it was more apparent. I’m thinking of the narrator’s run-in with Salinger in New York. At other points, I was amazed to be learning about facts that I would confirm with a search immediately (do yourself the favour and look up B. Traven if you haven’t).
Let’s see where my temperament brings me next.
January 27, 2020
“I wrote until I knew life; now that I understand the meaning of life, I have nothing to write "(Oscar Wilde)
Warning: this is for literature-freaks or geeks! The Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas (° 1948) choose as protagonist of the novel an unnamed author who is no longer able to write. Instead this man collects loose notes about other authors who stopped writing. What follows is a study of the "literature of No", a colourful collection of well-known and much less known writers and their writers' block or their conscious decision to put an end to it. Vila-Matas calls it ‘Bartleby's syndrome’, after the very entertaining short novel by Herman Melville about a clerk who refuses to perform anything, uttering his famous words "I would prefer not to".
It are indeed very short notes that our presumed author produces, haphazardly, jumping from author to author, across time. Those of you who are familiar with literature regularly come across famous names and have an ‘Aha!-Erlebnis’, but just as often you see names that you have never heard of, doubting whether they are invented or not (after some Wiki- or Google searches you can see that they really existed).
So this is rather an anthology, an encyclopaedia, fluttering from case to case. Because that is striking: our author does not really make a thorough study of the motives for stopping with writing. That does not seem to be his real focus. No, if I can make a guess, it is rather the reverse movement: by loosely emphasizing what writers encourages to give up, he focuses all the more on the miraculous thing that people even do take pen and paper and try to produce a story. And so, as a reader of this novel, you may remain on your hunger, but at the end you are left with the feeling that it is an exceptional privilege to be able to devour that chaotic jumble of writings (very Borges-like) and to enter a different world every time. In the end this little book is no less than an ode to literature.
Warning: this is for literature-freaks or geeks! The Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas (° 1948) choose as protagonist of the novel an unnamed author who is no longer able to write. Instead this man collects loose notes about other authors who stopped writing. What follows is a study of the "literature of No", a colourful collection of well-known and much less known writers and their writers' block or their conscious decision to put an end to it. Vila-Matas calls it ‘Bartleby's syndrome’, after the very entertaining short novel by Herman Melville about a clerk who refuses to perform anything, uttering his famous words "I would prefer not to".
It are indeed very short notes that our presumed author produces, haphazardly, jumping from author to author, across time. Those of you who are familiar with literature regularly come across famous names and have an ‘Aha!-Erlebnis’, but just as often you see names that you have never heard of, doubting whether they are invented or not (after some Wiki- or Google searches you can see that they really existed).
So this is rather an anthology, an encyclopaedia, fluttering from case to case. Because that is striking: our author does not really make a thorough study of the motives for stopping with writing. That does not seem to be his real focus. No, if I can make a guess, it is rather the reverse movement: by loosely emphasizing what writers encourages to give up, he focuses all the more on the miraculous thing that people even do take pen and paper and try to produce a story. And so, as a reader of this novel, you may remain on your hunger, but at the end you are left with the feeling that it is an exceptional privilege to be able to devour that chaotic jumble of writings (very Borges-like) and to enter a different world every time. In the end this little book is no less than an ode to literature.
March 27, 2021
عندما شرعت في قراءة تلك الرواية، وبعد أن قرأت الصفحات الأولى، شعرت أن (متلازمة بارتلبي) بدأت تتمكن منّي، وعندها فقط شعرت أني (أفضل ألا أكملها!) ففي داخلي بارتلبي صغير، مازال يافعاً، يرفض العالم وما فيه!
في البداية، لمن لا يعرف بارتلبي، هو شخصية ظهرت في قصة قصيرة للأديب الأمريكي هيرمان ملفل، بعنوان بارتلبي النساخ. وماذا في ذلك؟! دعني أخبرك القليل عن ذلك الصديق القديم. بارتلبي شخص غامض، غريب الأطوار، لا أحد يعرف عنه شيء، وهو لا يريد أن يطلعنا على ماضيه. شخص منعزل، رافض للمجتمع ورافض لكل شيء تقريباً. وصفه ملفل بهذا الوصف : "لكنه يبدو وحيدًا، وحيدًا تمامًا في الكون، قطعة من حطام سفينة في عرض الأطلنطي" فلك أن تتخيل تلك الشخصية!
لا أريد أن أبتعد كثيراً عن موضوعنا، بطل رواية "بارتلبي وأصحابه" هو كاتب، كتب رواية واحدة فقط، وتوقف عن الكتابة بسبب اجبار والده له على تغيير الكثير في روايته تلك. فقرر أن يتوقف عن الكتابة. وبعد مرور 25 عاما، وبصدفة عجيبة تخيل أنه سمع سكرتيرة المدير تنادي (بارتلبي) فتذكر تلك الشخصية التي تحدثت عنها منذ قليل. وقرر أن يكتب في دفاتره عن كل الكتاب الذين قرروا أن يتوقفوا عن الكتابة وعن الأدب. فكانت تلك الدفاتر هي متن روايتنا هذه.
من خلال هذه الرواية، يطلعنا أنريكه، على كم كبير وهائل من الكُتاب الذين توقفوا عن الكتابة، اختلفت الأسباب والتوقف واحد. المميز والغريب في هذه الرواية، هو أسلوب السرد، فأسلوب السرد هنا مقالي، يشبه الملاحظات واليوميات. ولكن إذا تمعنا النظر، سنجد أن ذلك الأسلوب هو الأمثل في تلك الحالة، فالراوي هنا أيضاً بارتلبي إمتنع عن الكتابة لسنوات. شخص يميل للعزلة. شخص يحاول أن يدون يومياته عن كتاب اختاروا العزلة ورفضوا الكتابة.
.
في البداية، لمن لا يعرف بارتلبي، هو شخصية ظهرت في قصة قصيرة للأديب الأمريكي هيرمان ملفل، بعنوان بارتلبي النساخ. وماذا في ذلك؟! دعني أخبرك القليل عن ذلك الصديق القديم. بارتلبي شخص غامض، غريب الأطوار، لا أحد يعرف عنه شيء، وهو لا يريد أن يطلعنا على ماضيه. شخص منعزل، رافض للمجتمع ورافض لكل شيء تقريباً. وصفه ملفل بهذا الوصف : "لكنه يبدو وحيدًا، وحيدًا تمامًا في الكون، قطعة من حطام سفينة في عرض الأطلنطي" فلك أن تتخيل تلك الشخصية!
لا أريد أن أبتعد كثيراً عن موضوعنا، بطل رواية "بارتلبي وأصحابه" هو كاتب، كتب رواية واحدة فقط، وتوقف عن الكتابة بسبب اجبار والده له على تغيير الكثير في روايته تلك. فقرر أن يتوقف عن الكتابة. وبعد مرور 25 عاما، وبصدفة عجيبة تخيل أنه سمع سكرتيرة المدير تنادي (بارتلبي) فتذكر تلك الشخصية التي تحدثت عنها منذ قليل. وقرر أن يكتب في دفاتره عن كل الكتاب الذين قرروا أن يتوقفوا عن الكتابة وعن الأدب. فكانت تلك الدفاتر هي متن روايتنا هذه.
من خلال هذه الرواية، يطلعنا أنريكه، على كم كبير وهائل من الكُتاب الذين توقفوا عن الكتابة، اختلفت الأسباب والتوقف واحد. المميز والغريب في هذه الرواية، هو أسلوب السرد، فأسلوب السرد هنا مقالي، يشبه الملاحظات واليوميات. ولكن إذا تمعنا النظر، سنجد أن ذلك الأسلوب هو الأمثل في تلك الحالة، فالراوي هنا أيضاً بارتلبي إمتنع عن الكتابة لسنوات. شخص يميل للعزلة. شخص يحاول أن يدون يومياته عن كتاب اختاروا العزلة ورفضوا الكتابة.
.
May 31, 2021
Depois de ter lido Bartleby pela primeira vez, fazia todo o sentido conhecer a lista ilustre - ou nem tanto - de escritores que sofrem da síndrome de Bartleby, segundo Enrique Vila-Matas.
São escritores que deixaram de escrever ou passaram muito tempo sem o fazer, pelos motivos mais diversos.
Interessante, mas um pouco caótico, este elencar de desistentes da literatura, pelo menos da publicada.
São escritores que deixaram de escrever ou passaram muito tempo sem o fazer, pelos motivos mais diversos.
Interessante, mas um pouco caótico, este elencar de desistentes da literatura, pelo menos da publicada.
March 15, 2015
E' incredibile. Ho appena attribuito 5 stelle a un libro che, praticamente, mi confina nel ruolo della cretina integrale. Se ne deduce che dev'essere proprio vero.
ROTFL
PS: Appena mi passa la "ridarella", metto assieme un commento meno cretino. Nell'ambito delle mie possibilità di "cretina", ovviamente. :-D
Comunque, ve lo consiglio sin d'ora. E' davvero notevole.
******
Ok, la “ridarella” mi è passata. :-)
Questo libro non è proprio un romanzo, benché lo sia.
Non è neanche proprio un saggio, ma è anche questo.
E neppure una raccolta di racconti, anche se ci sono dei racconti. Brevissimi, ma ci sono.
Gli inserti autobiografici, poi, sono talmente rapidi, che quasi non ce ne si accorge. Però ci sono pure quelli.
E allora cos’è?
E’ una serie di “note a piè di pagina” ad un testo che non c’è. C’è tutto (romanzo, saggio, racconto, biografia), ma non c’è il testo cui le note si riferiscono. Intrigante, eh? Su, su, dite la verità. Non fate i timidi.
E di cosa parlano le note?
Dei “bartleby”, naturalmente. Altrimenti il titolo da dove salterebbe fuori?
E chi sono i “bartleby”?
Come chi sono? Sono quegli esseri che ospitano dentro di sé una profonda negazione del mondo. Prendono il nome dallo scrivano Bartleby, l'impiegato di un racconto di Herman Melville che non è stato mai visto leggere nemmeno un giornale e che, per lunghi intervalli di tempo, se ne resta in piedi a guardare fuori dalla pallida finestra che c'è dietro un paravento, rivolto verso un muro di mattoni di Wall Street. Bartleby non beve mai birra, tè o caffè come gli altri; non è mai andato da nessuna parte, giacché abita nell'ufficio, dove trascorre persino le domeniche; non ha mai detto chi è, né da dove viene, né se ha dei familiari a questo mondo; quando gli si domanda dove è nato o gli si affida un lavoro o gli si chiede che racconti qualcosa di sé, risponde invariabilmente: "Preferirei non farlo". Ecco chi sono i “bartleby”. Sono persone che, a un certo punto della loro vita, dicono “no”, per scelta o per un qualche tipo di necessità/fatalità. L’estensore stesso delle note lo è. Un “bartleby”, intendo.
E, incredibilmente, da questo insieme di annotazioni eterogenee nasce uno scritto appassionante, coinvolgente e interessante come pochi. Una narrazione che va avanti e indietro nel tempo, ritorna a volte su temi e personaggi già citati o si perde in rivoli inaspettati e sorprendenti prima di tornare più o meno in carreggiata.
Si parla soprattutto di scrittori, ma non solo. C’è spazio anche per qualche altro tipo di artista.
Ed è quasi tutto vero quel ci viene raccontato, ma non proprio sempre. Eh sì, perché Vila-Matas, ogni tanto, ci infila un ritrattino delizioso, ma maliziosamente e perfidamente falso. Solo che, a meno di non avere una cultura enciclopedica come la sua, il lettore non è mai del tutto sicuro di non essere stato preso per i fondelli, a meno di non “googolare” alla grande. Io, per un po’ l’ho fatto, perché, da buon “capricorno”, sono diffidente. Ma poi mi sono detta: “Oh, bé, e chissenefrega? Così finisco per perdermi tutto il piacere della lettura” e ho smesso. Ma, almeno tre casi di “falso” li ho cuccati. :-)
Affascinante, davvero affascinante. L’ho letto con la stessa foga che si riserverebbe a un “giallo” mozzafiato, tant’è che dovrò sicuramente riprenderlo in mano.
E poi sono arrivata a pagina 155. E lì che ho cominciato a ridere perché Enrique Vila-Matas parla della “linea retta” e mi dà, implicitamente, della cretina integrale. No, perché si dà il caso che io abbia recentemente usato proprio il concetto di linea retta per fare dell’ironia sugli scrittori russi in generale e Tolstoj in particolare (vedasi la mia recensione su “Anna Karenina”).
Qualcuno sostiene che non siamo noi a scegliere i libri da leggere, ma che sono loro a chiamarci per essere letti. Dev’essere proprio così. Infatti “Bartleby e compagnia” doveva dirmi una cosa, quindi mi ha chiamato. E me l’ha detta:
Questo lo chiamerei una sindrome di Bartleby al contrario. Se molti scrittori hanno inventato "zii Celerini" di ogni genere per riflettere sui propri silenzi, il caso di Carlo Emilio Gadda non potrebbe essere più opposto al loro, giacché dedicò tutta la vita a praticare, con notevole entusiasmo, quella che Italo Calvino definì "arte della molteplicità", cioè l'arte di scrivere una narrazione interminabile, quel racconto infinito che molto tempo prima aveva scoperto Laurence Sterne nel suo Tristram Shandy, dove ci dice che in una narrazione lo scrittore non può condurre la sua storia come il mulattiere conduce il mulo - in linea retta e sempre in avanti -, poiché se è dotato di un minimo di intelligenza si troverà obbligato, lungo il suo cammino, a deviare cinquanta volte dalla linea retta per unirsi a questo o a quel gruppo, e non lo potrà evitare in nessun modo: “Gli si presenteranno viste e prospettive che reclameranno continuamente la sua attenzione; e gli sarà tanto impossibile non fermarsi a guardarle quanto volare”.
Vabbè, mi cospargo il capo di cenere e parto seduta stante per Canossa. Ma sono contenta lo stesso, perché valeva pena essere definita “cretina” pur di avere il piacere di leggere questo libro. :-)
Però, adesso che ci penso, forse anche Anna Karenina stessa è una “bartleby”. In fondo, a un certo punto comincia a dire “no” e non si ferma più, sino alle estreme conseguenze.
Ah, dimenticavo … l’epigrafe è:
La gloria o il merito di certi uomini consiste
nello scrivere bene; quello di altri consiste
nel non scrivere affatto.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
Avrebbe potuto essere diversa?
ROTFL
PS: Appena mi passa la "ridarella", metto assieme un commento meno cretino. Nell'ambito delle mie possibilità di "cretina", ovviamente. :-D
Comunque, ve lo consiglio sin d'ora. E' davvero notevole.
******
Ok, la “ridarella” mi è passata. :-)
Questo libro non è proprio un romanzo, benché lo sia.
Non è neanche proprio un saggio, ma è anche questo.
E neppure una raccolta di racconti, anche se ci sono dei racconti. Brevissimi, ma ci sono.
Gli inserti autobiografici, poi, sono talmente rapidi, che quasi non ce ne si accorge. Però ci sono pure quelli.
E allora cos’è?
E’ una serie di “note a piè di pagina” ad un testo che non c’è. C’è tutto (romanzo, saggio, racconto, biografia), ma non c’è il testo cui le note si riferiscono. Intrigante, eh? Su, su, dite la verità. Non fate i timidi.
E di cosa parlano le note?
Dei “bartleby”, naturalmente. Altrimenti il titolo da dove salterebbe fuori?
E chi sono i “bartleby”?
Come chi sono? Sono quegli esseri che ospitano dentro di sé una profonda negazione del mondo. Prendono il nome dallo scrivano Bartleby, l'impiegato di un racconto di Herman Melville che non è stato mai visto leggere nemmeno un giornale e che, per lunghi intervalli di tempo, se ne resta in piedi a guardare fuori dalla pallida finestra che c'è dietro un paravento, rivolto verso un muro di mattoni di Wall Street. Bartleby non beve mai birra, tè o caffè come gli altri; non è mai andato da nessuna parte, giacché abita nell'ufficio, dove trascorre persino le domeniche; non ha mai detto chi è, né da dove viene, né se ha dei familiari a questo mondo; quando gli si domanda dove è nato o gli si affida un lavoro o gli si chiede che racconti qualcosa di sé, risponde invariabilmente: "Preferirei non farlo". Ecco chi sono i “bartleby”. Sono persone che, a un certo punto della loro vita, dicono “no”, per scelta o per un qualche tipo di necessità/fatalità. L’estensore stesso delle note lo è. Un “bartleby”, intendo.
E, incredibilmente, da questo insieme di annotazioni eterogenee nasce uno scritto appassionante, coinvolgente e interessante come pochi. Una narrazione che va avanti e indietro nel tempo, ritorna a volte su temi e personaggi già citati o si perde in rivoli inaspettati e sorprendenti prima di tornare più o meno in carreggiata.
Si parla soprattutto di scrittori, ma non solo. C’è spazio anche per qualche altro tipo di artista.
Ed è quasi tutto vero quel ci viene raccontato, ma non proprio sempre. Eh sì, perché Vila-Matas, ogni tanto, ci infila un ritrattino delizioso, ma maliziosamente e perfidamente falso. Solo che, a meno di non avere una cultura enciclopedica come la sua, il lettore non è mai del tutto sicuro di non essere stato preso per i fondelli, a meno di non “googolare” alla grande. Io, per un po’ l’ho fatto, perché, da buon “capricorno”, sono diffidente. Ma poi mi sono detta: “Oh, bé, e chissenefrega? Così finisco per perdermi tutto il piacere della lettura” e ho smesso. Ma, almeno tre casi di “falso” li ho cuccati. :-)
Affascinante, davvero affascinante. L’ho letto con la stessa foga che si riserverebbe a un “giallo” mozzafiato, tant’è che dovrò sicuramente riprenderlo in mano.
E poi sono arrivata a pagina 155. E lì che ho cominciato a ridere perché Enrique Vila-Matas parla della “linea retta” e mi dà, implicitamente, della cretina integrale. No, perché si dà il caso che io abbia recentemente usato proprio il concetto di linea retta per fare dell’ironia sugli scrittori russi in generale e Tolstoj in particolare (vedasi la mia recensione su “Anna Karenina”).
Qualcuno sostiene che non siamo noi a scegliere i libri da leggere, ma che sono loro a chiamarci per essere letti. Dev’essere proprio così. Infatti “Bartleby e compagnia” doveva dirmi una cosa, quindi mi ha chiamato. E me l’ha detta:
Questo lo chiamerei una sindrome di Bartleby al contrario. Se molti scrittori hanno inventato "zii Celerini" di ogni genere per riflettere sui propri silenzi, il caso di Carlo Emilio Gadda non potrebbe essere più opposto al loro, giacché dedicò tutta la vita a praticare, con notevole entusiasmo, quella che Italo Calvino definì "arte della molteplicità", cioè l'arte di scrivere una narrazione interminabile, quel racconto infinito che molto tempo prima aveva scoperto Laurence Sterne nel suo Tristram Shandy, dove ci dice che in una narrazione lo scrittore non può condurre la sua storia come il mulattiere conduce il mulo - in linea retta e sempre in avanti -, poiché se è dotato di un minimo di intelligenza si troverà obbligato, lungo il suo cammino, a deviare cinquanta volte dalla linea retta per unirsi a questo o a quel gruppo, e non lo potrà evitare in nessun modo: “Gli si presenteranno viste e prospettive che reclameranno continuamente la sua attenzione; e gli sarà tanto impossibile non fermarsi a guardarle quanto volare”.
Vabbè, mi cospargo il capo di cenere e parto seduta stante per Canossa. Ma sono contenta lo stesso, perché valeva pena essere definita “cretina” pur di avere il piacere di leggere questo libro. :-)
Però, adesso che ci penso, forse anche Anna Karenina stessa è una “bartleby”. In fondo, a un certo punto comincia a dire “no” e non si ferma più, sino alle estreme conseguenze.
Ah, dimenticavo … l’epigrafe è:
La gloria o il merito di certi uomini consiste
nello scrivere bene; quello di altri consiste
nel non scrivere affatto.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
Avrebbe potuto essere diversa?
September 12, 2017
Como estamos enganados em tantas coisas... que convicta eu estava de que só gostava de ler romances...
Comprei este livro (como compro muitos outros) sem me preocupar em saber de que tratava, apenas motivada pelas "estrelas" do Goodreads, particularmente as de alguns amigos, cujas leituras e opiniões sigo atentamente. É por experiências e surpresas como esta, que me enriquecem e me proporcionam momentos de grande prazer, que sou dependente desta rede social e bendigo o dia em que nela me inscrevi.
Afinal se este livro não é um romance, então é o quê? São notas de rodapé...!
Bartleby é uma personagem de um conto de Herman Melville, que nunca foi visto a fazer fosse o que fosse e de quem ninguém sabia nada. Sempre que algo lhe era perguntado ou solicitado, respondia: "Preferia não o fazer."
Inspirado nesta personagem, o autor identifica um grande número de escritores que sofrem da Síndroma de Bartleby e cuja produção literária é escassa ou, nalguns casos, nula.
De uma forma divertida e absorvente, Enrique Vila-Matas dá-nos a conhecer dezenas de "escritores do Não" e as motivações que os levaram a desistir de escrever.
Recomendo a leitura desta pequena maravilha a quem gosta de ler, de livros e, consequentemente, de quem os escreve.
"Alguma certeza deve existir,
senão de amar, ao menos de não amar."
Dylan Thomas
Comprei este livro (como compro muitos outros) sem me preocupar em saber de que tratava, apenas motivada pelas "estrelas" do Goodreads, particularmente as de alguns amigos, cujas leituras e opiniões sigo atentamente. É por experiências e surpresas como esta, que me enriquecem e me proporcionam momentos de grande prazer, que sou dependente desta rede social e bendigo o dia em que nela me inscrevi.
Afinal se este livro não é um romance, então é o quê? São notas de rodapé...!
Bartleby é uma personagem de um conto de Herman Melville, que nunca foi visto a fazer fosse o que fosse e de quem ninguém sabia nada. Sempre que algo lhe era perguntado ou solicitado, respondia: "Preferia não o fazer."
Inspirado nesta personagem, o autor identifica um grande número de escritores que sofrem da Síndroma de Bartleby e cuja produção literária é escassa ou, nalguns casos, nula.
De uma forma divertida e absorvente, Enrique Vila-Matas dá-nos a conhecer dezenas de "escritores do Não" e as motivações que os levaram a desistir de escrever.
Recomendo a leitura desta pequena maravilha a quem gosta de ler, de livros e, consequentemente, de quem os escreve.
"Alguma certeza deve existir,
senão de amar, ao menos de não amar."
Dylan Thomas
November 15, 2024
La gran noticia de este libro es que por fin conocí al tío Celerino, el causante de la exigua producción de Juan Rulfo. Me habían hablado del tío Celerino unas amigas de este grupo de GR. Con su fallecimiento “truncó” la carrera literaria de su sobrino. Esa era la excusa que siempre ponía Rulfo por haber publicado solo dos libros: que su tío Celerino falleció y este era el que le contaba todas las historias que él escribía. Debió existir en verdad este personaje, bebedor y con gran don de la palabra y gentes, gran fabulador y mentiroso también; creo que todos conocemos personajes con esa personalidad tan atrayente como embaucadora. Curioso que el gobierno mexicano le encomendara la labor de acudir a sitios remotos del país a confirmar a católicos, siendo él ateo. A estas excursiones le acompañaba su sobrino Juan, el cual efectivamente sacaba buen número de relatos de esa tradición oral y rural mexicana profunda.
La novela es buena pero no sé si es capaz de aguantar el buen ritmo de arranque, con autores y obras potentes, como el ya mentado Rulfo, o el Bartlevy de Melville o escritores de mucho peso como Walser y ese concepto de bartlevys literarios, que vienen a significar la falta de producción literaria de forma voluntaria, como forma de renuncia o una especie de renuncia existencial. Un poco más adelante Wakefield de Hawthorne y su incuestionable relación con Bartlevy, la relación de amistad entre los autores que yo desconocía, esos innegables precedentes y ascendente sobre Kafka, muy interesante. La pequeña pega que tiene, es que por momentos es irregular, creo que un libro más breve hubiera sido mejor.
De Vila Matas que decir a estas alturas… que de nuevo juega la metaficción (aquí menos), pero se dibuja con una joroba, su siempre conciencia literaria y una serie de complejos lastres relacionados con el NO, que vuelca en esta obra:
"Es maravilloso el no porque es un centro vacío, pero siempre fructífero. A alguien que dice no con truenos y relámpagos, el mismo diablo no puede forzarle a que diga sí.Porque todos los ho que dicen sí, mienten; en cuanto a los hombres que dicen no, bueno se encuentran en la feliz condición de viajeros por Europa. Cruzan las fronteras de la eternidad sin nada más que una maletas, es decir, el Ego. Mientras que, en cambio, toda esa gentuza que dice sí viaja con montones de equipaje y, malditos ellos, nunca pasarán por las puertas de la aduana" Carta de Melville a Hawthorne.
O Chamfort, tras luchar por la Revolución francesa y luego esta condenarle:
"¿Por qué no publicáis? Porque el público posee el colmo del mal gusto y el afán por la denigración...porque temo morir sin haber vivido...porque se insta a trabajar por la misma razón que cuando nos asomamos a la ventana deseamos ver pasar por la calle a los monos y a los domador de osos...porque cuando más se desvanece mi cartel literario más feliz me siento...porque no deseo hacer como las gentes de letras, que se asemejan a los asnos coceando y peleándose ante un pesebre vacío...porque el público no se interesa más que por los éxitos que no aprecia"
La novela es buena pero no sé si es capaz de aguantar el buen ritmo de arranque, con autores y obras potentes, como el ya mentado Rulfo, o el Bartlevy de Melville o escritores de mucho peso como Walser y ese concepto de bartlevys literarios, que vienen a significar la falta de producción literaria de forma voluntaria, como forma de renuncia o una especie de renuncia existencial. Un poco más adelante Wakefield de Hawthorne y su incuestionable relación con Bartlevy, la relación de amistad entre los autores que yo desconocía, esos innegables precedentes y ascendente sobre Kafka, muy interesante. La pequeña pega que tiene, es que por momentos es irregular, creo que un libro más breve hubiera sido mejor.
De Vila Matas que decir a estas alturas… que de nuevo juega la metaficción (aquí menos), pero se dibuja con una joroba, su siempre conciencia literaria y una serie de complejos lastres relacionados con el NO, que vuelca en esta obra:
"Es maravilloso el no porque es un centro vacío, pero siempre fructífero. A alguien que dice no con truenos y relámpagos, el mismo diablo no puede forzarle a que diga sí.Porque todos los ho que dicen sí, mienten; en cuanto a los hombres que dicen no, bueno se encuentran en la feliz condición de viajeros por Europa. Cruzan las fronteras de la eternidad sin nada más que una maletas, es decir, el Ego. Mientras que, en cambio, toda esa gentuza que dice sí viaja con montones de equipaje y, malditos ellos, nunca pasarán por las puertas de la aduana" Carta de Melville a Hawthorne.
O Chamfort, tras luchar por la Revolución francesa y luego esta condenarle:
"¿Por qué no publicáis? Porque el público posee el colmo del mal gusto y el afán por la denigración...porque temo morir sin haber vivido...porque se insta a trabajar por la misma razón que cuando nos asomamos a la ventana deseamos ver pasar por la calle a los monos y a los domador de osos...porque cuando más se desvanece mi cartel literario más feliz me siento...porque no deseo hacer como las gentes de letras, que se asemejan a los asnos coceando y peleándose ante un pesebre vacío...porque el público no se interesa más que por los éxitos que no aprecia"
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